Welcome to our digital church service here at the Glowell, here in my study.
Let's begin hearing God's words together as our call to worship.
2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 6, we read this.
For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness,
made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
In our weakness, in our fear that we feel as Christians, as the church,
it's a great reminder that God has caused the light of his glory to shine as we see it in the face of Jesus.
So let's worship God.
Led by Kellan, we'll sing the hymn, How Deep the Father's Love for Us.
How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond the measure,
That he should give his only Son,
To make a wretch his treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss,
The Father turns his face away,
As wounds which mar the chosen power,
Bring many sons to glory.
Behold the man upon the cross,
My guilt upon his shoulders,
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice,
All out among the swathers,
It was my sin that held him there,
Until it was accomplished.
His dying breath has brought me life,
I know that it is finished.
I will not boast in any faith,
No gifts, no power, no wisdom,
But I will boast in Jesus Christ,
His death and resurrection.
Why should I gain from his reward?
I cannot give an answer,
But this I know with all my heart,
His wounds have paid my ransom.
And now let's pray together.
Let's pray.
Lord, we are so thankful for your love.
We thank you for the love that we see in the story of Easter.
Love that sent your son Jesus into our world.
The love of Jesus that led him in willing obedience to go to the cross,
To bear the sins of the world,
To be punished in our place,
So that we might be forgiven,
So that we might be justified,
That we might be welcomed into your family.
Lord, we thank you for the resurrection.
We thank you for the victory of Jesus.
We thank you for justice satisfied,
For love displayed,
For eternal life as the hope for all who trust in Jesus.
We thank you for the glory of Jesus.
We thank you for the glory of God in the face of Jesus.
That as we look at his life,
As we listen to his words,
As we see his ministry,
That we see your character and your actions.
Now we thank you for his mercy and his kindness.
We thank you for his welcome to the strangers,
To the outcasts,
To the lowest of the low in his day,
Extending love and grace and hope for sinners.
Lord, we thank you for the treasure that we have in the good news of who Jesus is as the Son of God and our Saviour,
And what he has done in reconciling us to himself.
And we pray that in these difficult days,
You would cause us to treasure him all the more.
And that we would see that his is a lasting and an eternal treasure.
That all that we have in this life,
We would hold on to it lightly,
Recognizing that there are things that we cannot keep.
There are things that we may lose,
But that we would reckon nothing to be as great as knowing Jesus and being found in him.
Lord, we pray that at this time,
His mercy and his love would be known in the world.
That it would be known in the work of his people.
That as a church, in whatever opportunities we have,
We would look to show love and kindness and compassion to others.
And we pray especially that as churches in a very different way,
Look to focus attention on the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We pray that that message would be heard as good news by many.
We pray for ourselves in Beclue that as we look to share with friends and family,
And online,
And that you by your spirit would take that word and make it live in people's hearts.
And so that many might turn from sin to trust in Jesus.
And now we pray that in the short time we have together,
We pray that by your spirit,
You would speak truth into our hearts.
And that we would see more of the glory of Jesus.
That we would be glad in him together.
Praying in his name.
Amen.
Now let's read together in John's Gospel.
We were in John chapter 16 last week and we'll continue there.
Last week we looked at verses 7 to 11.
Now we'll be in verse 12 to 15.
But let me again read that same section, chapter 16 from verse 5 to verse 15.
So let's hear God's word together.
Now I am going to him who sent me.
Yet none of you asks me, where are you going?
Because I have said these things you are filled with grief.
But I tell you the truth.
It is for your good that I am going away.
Unless I go away the counsellor will not come to you.
But if I go I will send him to you.
When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment.
In regard to sin, because men do not believe in me.
In regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father where you can see me no longer.
And in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.
I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.
But when he, the spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.
He will not speak on his own.
He will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come.
He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.
All that belongs to the Father is mine.
That is why I said the spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.
So let's think about those words, especially those words in verses 12 to 15.
As we think about the Holy Spirit in a believer's life for the second, third time.
Let's see the Holy Spirit glorifies.
Now that's our thought for today.
Fearful disciples need to listen to the right voice.
I wonder if you have experienced the paralysis caused by fear.
Have you found yourself unable to process facts and information due to stress, due to confusion,
feeling so overwhelmed that you just cannot put the pieces together?
Maybe that's you today.
Maybe that's been your experience in the last few weeks.
In verse 12 that we just read.
This is part of Jesus extended teaching.
This is the night before the cross.
He gets to the point where he acknowledges that he wants to bring more truth to the disciples, but they are unable to hear.
Sorrow and confusion are such that they are unable to hear.
But Jesus brings words of hope to them and by extension to us.
He says to them, the spirit of truth is coming.
And when the spirit of truth comes, he will glorify Jesus in the hearts of the apostles.
He will lead them to go deeper into the truth.
He will guide them in all truth.
So for you and for me today, living this side of the cross and resurrection and the gift of the spirit, the reality for a Christian today is that you have the spirit of Christ in you.
That spirit Jesus promised, that spirit has now come and is in you.
And you have the Bible that the Holy Spirit inspired so that you can see and enjoy the glory of Jesus, your saviour.
So our big point for this evening is this.
The Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus by guiding us in the Bible to see and delight in Christ's glory.
So we're going to look at this two ways.
First of all, we're going to see how does the Holy Spirit glorify Jesus in the lives and the experience of the apostles, first of all.
And then we'll think about ourselves.
So in verse 12, remember, this is Jesus speaking.
Jesus, who at the beginning of John's gospel is introduced as the word of God.
So Jesus is the great supreme revelation of God.
And Jesus has the word of God.
He says, I want to bring you more truth.
Here's the question.
When will they be ready to hear more truth from Jesus?
Verse 13.
When he, the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.
So in the coming of the spirit of truth, they'll be ready to hear more.
So here's something for us to recognize.
The spirit brings more of Jesus as the truth of God, as the revelation of God.
So remember Jesus' words, I am the way, the truth and the life.
Well, the spirit is going to come, Jesus says, to fill out the revelation of Jesus, to help them to see Jesus as the truth in two ways.
First of all, Jesus has already said to them earlier that the spirit would come to bring them a reminder.
John chapter 14, verse 26.
The Holy Spirit will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
So the spirit will help them to recall the words and the actions of Jesus.
And that includes, again in verse 17, things yet to come.
So not just everything before the cross, but the events and the words of Jesus after the cross also.
So he will remind them, but also Jesus says that the spirit will guide them into the truth so that they can understand in new ways the significance of Jesus' words, Jesus' actions.
So that they will be able to see in the life of Jesus, here is the Son of God who has become one of us.
And in his perfect life of love and obedience, he has become the substitute that we need.
They'll be able to look at the cross and to see the death of Jesus as the place where redemption is accomplished.
Where Jesus, in his own body and through his shed blood, pays the ransom price to set us free from slavery to sin so that we might be free to know and enjoy God.
They will see the cross as the place where propitiation happens, where the just anger of God that should fall on us falls on Jesus instead.
That the storm of God's anger falls on Jesus as he takes our sin so that we can enjoy God's blessing and God's smile.
And the spirit will help the disciples to see that.
The spirit will help them to understand the significance of Jesus' resurrection to see it as victory over Satan and sin and death.
Here is justice that has been satisfied.
They'll be able to see that the exaltation of Jesus shows us that he is the king, the king who rules and reigns.
They'll be able to see Jesus exalted and acting as mediator, interceding on behalf of his church, praying and pleading for his church.
So the spirit will guide them into the truth of Jesus and to see more and more of its significance.
The Holy Spirit in this way functions like a teacher.
Maybe you have or had, if you're pupils or students, a standout teacher, an outstanding teacher, one who is able to clearly communicate facts to you.
So to show you truth, but also to show the significance of that truth, to make the facts come to life so that you're excited to discover more.
Well, the spirit functions like that for us.
The spirit would function like that for the apostles, to remind them of the facts of the words and the life of Jesus and the life changing significance of the gospel so that they would see more of the glory of Jesus so that they would glorify Jesus.
Alongside that, the spirit also glorify Jesus by speaking from Jesus with divine authority so that they know they can trust the words that the spirit brings.
Notice the emphasis in these verses.
Verse 13.
The spirit who will guide you into all truth, he will not speak on his own.
He will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come.
Verse 14.
He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.
Verse 15.
The spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.
Here is the role of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
He is a serving spirit.
He has this role of glorifying the son in the lives of his people.
So in the apostles and then in the church.
So just as Jesus, the son, lives to bring glory to the father, so the spirit serves us by showing us, by glorifying the son and the father in our lives and in our experience.
It matches the pattern of Jesus.
Jesus in John chapter 8 verse 50 said,
I do not seek my own glory.
Whose glory does Jesus seek?
He seeks the glory of his father.
John 17 verse 4 as he prays to his father.
He says, I have brought you glory by completing the work you gave me to do.
So we've got this connection.
So the spirit is connecting us to Jesus and his words.
Jesus Christ is our mediator.
So we need to go to Christ to see and enjoy the glory of God.
So the spirit is linking us to Christ and linking us then to the glory of the son and the glory of the father.
This helps us to see.
This little passage helps us to see the goal of the father and the son and the spirit.
What is their goal?
It is to display the glory of God.
What we need is to see and to know and enjoy the glory of God.
And so the spirit brings his word for that purpose.
Maybe to help us think about the connection that we have here in these verses.
Think about couriers.
Think about our delivery drivers.
Well, the spirit.
We can think of it.
The spirit as a courier.
What's he carrying?
He's carrying the words of truth from Jesus to the apostles.
So he is delivering words of truth that demonstrate the glory of Jesus to the apostles.
And then the apostles will in turn become delivery men.
They will be led by the spirit to preach and to write so that others too would then see the glory of Jesus.
Paul in 1 Corinthians as he talks in words that we hear whenever we share the Lord's Supper.
He says,
I received from the Lord what I passed on to you.
Receiving teaching and truth from the spirit which he then passes on what the apostles pass on.
So Jesus uses the spirit and the word of God so that we might receive.
So the apostles might receive and we might receive his glory.
So that's the apostles and how the Holy Spirit reveals the glory of Jesus to them.
How does the Holy Spirit glorify Jesus today in the life of his people?
Let me begin with a quote from J.I. Packer.
Where he says,
The Spirit's message to us is never look at me, listen to me, come to me, get to know me, but always look at him.
Listen to him, come to him, get to know him and taste his gift of joy and peace.
The Holy Spirit wants us to look to Jesus and to love him and to know him and to know him better.
So four ways the Holy Spirit wants to reveal the glory of Jesus to you.
Four words.
First of all, the word saving.
So the Spirit glorifies Jesus in this way.
He reveals to our heart that Jesus is the only way to be saved.
Jesus is the way and the only way to God.
The only way to be right with God.
The Spirit exposes to us the emptiness of religion by works.
The emptiness of other religions that do not have at their centre the grace of God and Jesus as Saviour.
It's the Holy Spirit who reveals in our hearts, I am a great sinner.
Convicting us of our sin and our need.
And also showing us Jesus is a great Saviour.
So we don't just stay in our sin and our condemnation.
We look to him and we trust in his salvation.
It's the Holy Spirit that helps us to see and to say,
I need the Easter story to be the centre of my story.
That when Jesus died on the cross, he died for my sin.
And that because Jesus died for my sin, united to him, I too have died to the power of sin in my life.
So that I can now live to enjoy God and live in obedience to God with the help of the Spirit.
I need the good news of the resurrection to know that just as Jesus was raised to new life,
so he gives new life to me by the Spirit.
That I am born again, that I have eternal life.
So the Holy Spirit reveals the glory of Jesus in saving us.
And vital to this is the Spirit's work of revealing.
Jesus in John 16 is serving us well in so many ways.
One way that he is serving us is he's giving us confidence
when we read the New Testament to hear it and receive it as the Word of God.
So just as the Old Testament is the Word of God, so Jesus is saying the New Testament is the Word of God.
The apostles are inspired to write by the Spirit so we can trust their words.
And perhaps helpfully we could go to the words of Peter in the second letter that he writes.
He says there in chapter 1 verse 22,
So the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of Old Testament scripture.
But then in 2 Peter 3 verse 15, he says,
Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom that God gave him.
And he talks about Paul's writings as scripture.
So the point is the same Spirit that inspired the Old Testament is the same Spirit that inspired the writers of the New Testament.
The Spirit has inspired the whole Bible to reveal to us the glory of God and to reveal to us the glory of Jesus Christ.
So practically, that means for you and me today, we can have confidence in our Bibles.
There are no fresh words needed.
We have everything God intended for us to hear for our salvation, for our life of faith and godliness.
Practically too, that means you and I need to read our Bibles.
The one voice we need to hear is the voice of God.
We need to hear and we need to ask the Spirit to turn the light on in our minds and in our hearts
so that we would see Jesus on every page, so that we would see and appreciate his glory.
So when we pick up the Bible in the Old Testament, how does it point forward to the personal work of Jesus?
So thinking about the New Testament, how is it pointing us back to the death and the resurrection,
the life and the ascension of Jesus and that significance for our life?
How do the ethics of the Bible, how do they teach us about the rule of Jesus in our lives?
We want to read to see the glory of God in the Bible.
We want to see Jesus in the pages of scripture so that we would love him, follow him,
and our lives would be changed to be like him.
So the Spirit glorifies Jesus by revealing truth to us and revealing Jesus in the Word of God.
Again, connected to this is the idea of guiding.
In verse 13, Jesus said,
the Spirit of truth will guide you into all truth.
Maybe this is an important corrective on how we think about guidance today.
We are often looking, perhaps, and we hear it in Christian circles, looking for special guidance.
No, who should I marry?
What job should I have?
Where should I live?
But notice this is not the kind of guidance Jesus has in view.
What does the Spirit primarily guide us towards?
The Spirit guides us towards understanding God as he has revealed himself in the Bible.
The Spirit guides us towards seeing Jesus as the glory of God.
Seeing Jesus as the saviour for sinners.
The Spirit guides us to go deeper into revealed truth.
Revealed truth.
To explore, to meditate on the Word of God so that it would shape our identity.
It would shape our practice.
That it would help us to worship, to love, and to obey Jesus.
So practically, when we're reading the Bible, we want to connect that with praying.
Praying before, praying during our Bible reading.
Help me to understand this.
Help me to see and to know more of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit would be delighted to be the answer to that prayer.
To reveal more of the truth, more of the glory of Jesus in his Word as we take it and as we read it.
Because central to the purpose of the Holy Spirit in our lives is that Jesus would be glorified.
So that we would, number four, we would be delighting in Jesus.
So the Spirit doesn't just want us to see the glory of Jesus.
He wants you and I to positively delight in that glory.
To have Christ as our great treasure.
Maybe today, more than ever, we need to assess.
What is the one thing that I am holding on to more than anything else?
And that that would be Jesus.
When everything else seems to be shaking, that Jesus would be that solid rock we need to build our life on.
Some of us, we grew up with the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
Well, the Spirit of God wants to help you live out the Shorter Catechism.
Think about that first question.
What's our chief end?
What's our primary goal in our lives?
To glorify God and enjoy him forever.
You cannot do that yourself.
You need the Spirit's work.
And again, he is delighted to do that in you.
To help you to see and to enjoy the glory of God in the face of Jesus.
God.
Got me thinking about programs like Cash in the Attic or the Antiques Roadshow.
You know what happens there sometimes?
One person's family junk that thing that's in the corner gathering dust up in the attic or just in a spare junk room.
That person's family junk makes someone else gasp in excitement, jump for joy and be willing to empty the bank to have it.
The Holy Spirit wants you jumping for joy.
To appreciate the treasure that you have in Jesus.
To see the glory of Jesus and his salvation.
That every time we read the word, every time we pray, every time we sing, every time we gather in worship,
that we would be delighting in Jesus, led by the Spirit, to see more of his glory.
So disciples of Jesus, we need to listen to the Spirit's voice.
Because he would have us fix our eyes on Jesus.
To listen to him.
To come to him.
To find peace and hope and love and life instead of fear in him.
So we read the Bible.
That's the best advice I can give you at this time.
Read your Bible and read it with the help of the Spirit looking to see more of the glory of Jesus.
Now let's sing as we close a section from Psalm 27.
We will sing the first five verses.
The Lord's my Savior and my light.
Who will make me dismayed?
The Lord's the stronghold of my life.
Why should I be afraid?
When evildoers threaten me to take my life away.
My adversaries and my foes will stumble in that day.
Although an army hands me in, my heart will feel no dread.
Though war against me should arise, I will lift up my head.
One thing a plead before the Lord, and there shall seek always.
That I may come within God's house and dwell there all my days.
That on the beauty of the Lord I constantly may gaze.
And in his house may seek to know direction in his ways.
For in his dwelling he will keep me safe in troubled days.
Within his tent he'll shelter me and on a rock me raise.
And now let's close with a word of prayer.
Lord God, we pray by your Spirit you would so open our eyes and open our heart that we would truly see Christ as our treasure.
That we would see his glory more and more day by day.
That you would cause us to be thinking about his perfect life.
His perfect sacrifice.
His resurrection victory.
His ruling and reigning for his church.
His being in control of all things.
That by your Spirit you would lead us and guide us into the truth.
That you would do us good and bring us joy through your word.
This week we pray.
Amen.
Until next time, take care.
And may God bless you and bless you richly.
RH.
Amen.