The Ministry Of The Holy Spirit - [John 14:25-26]

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I would invite you to open your Bibles and turn them to John 14.
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John 14 as we continue to work through the Gospel of John. You know,
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I have the opportunity right now to give a shameless plug for Sunday School because I'm not teaching next week.
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Elder Pradeep will be teaching and so I would invite you and encourage you to come out next Sunday morning. I can do that without any shame whatsoever.
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And another shameless plug, tomorrow, I don't even know if this is televised. It should be on national
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TV, but I don't know if it is or not. Pastor Mike will be preaching in the Masters University Chapel.
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So that'll be neat. And I posted on Facebook, I'm like, you know, I feel sorry for the guy who has to follow him on Wednesday.
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I hope the guy is gifted because I don't know if he is or not. Some guy named
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Mark Dever. I don't know. So we'll see how it works out. Set the bar high and then
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Mark has to come along and see what he can do. And then you want to pray for Pastor Mike and I next week.
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We will be in California. I mean, Mike's already there, but we'll be there and we'll be at the Shepherds Conference.
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And it's a great opportunity for us to kind of, I mean, be served, but also to listen to great preaching, but also just to minister among men who are out there in the trenches week in and week out.
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And we can have some pretty good conversations while we're there. So be in prayer for us, please. Well, you know,
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I titled this message, the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And I thought people are probably driving by that and they're thinking they're going to come in here and we're going to be asking for people to be catchers.
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And there's going to be all kinds of, I don't know, holy fire or something, you know, crazy things going on in here.
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Is that what you think of when you see the ministry of the Holy Spirit? But it was kind of difficult to escape that topic when
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I came to this verse. But let me just say this, when we think about what people typically talk about, when they talk about the ministry of the
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Holy Spirit, whether it's speaking in tongues, whether it's roaring in laughter, all these kinds of things. And what do they say?
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They say, our charismatic friends say, well, you know what? God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
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So therefore, the things that he did in the past, he's going to do now. How many church services start with like, okay, today, we're going to bring out a tank of water and we're going to make ax heads float.
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Or today, we're going to go down to the reservoir and I'm going to part the seas. Why don't they do that?
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God's today the same, or is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So all the miracles that he used to do, he'll do the same thing today.
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Is that what the Bible teaches? The answer is no, it doesn't teach that.
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But we tend as, I wanted to say more conservative
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Christians, but I'll just say more biblical Christians. Thank you. We tend to focus on the ministry of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Why is that? Because the Bible focuses on the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Jesus said that the entire Bible talks about him, but if the
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Bible focuses so much on Jesus, well, shouldn't Christians, shouldn't Christian churches do the same thing?
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And today, as we look at the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and we're not going to look at it comprehensively, I can't go through every aspect of the
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Holy Spirit's ministry. And in fact, most of it isn't even contained in today's verses, not even implied by today's verses.
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So what I'm going to try to do is take today's two verses, and really it's one verse, and we're going to look at all the necessary,
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I think, all the necessary implications of it. And one of the key questions
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I want you to think about as we're looking at this today is, why can we trust scripture?
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How can we know that we have the very words of Jesus in the gospels?
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How can we know that? The answer is in today's message.
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Let me read our text today. I'm going to start in verse 18 of John, uh, verse 14, or sorry, chapter 14, verse 18,
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John, the beloved apostle writes, I will not leave you. This is Jesus. I will not leave you as orphans.
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I will come to you yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me because I live.
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You will also, or you also will live in that day. You will know that I am in my father and you and me and I, and you, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he, it is who loves me.
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And he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him,
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Judas, not Iscariot said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?
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Jesus answered him. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him.
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Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine, but the father's who sent me these things.
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I have spoken to you. Why, while I am still with you, but the helper of the
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Holy spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance.
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All that I have said to you now, we're just a few hours.
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We're in the upper room discourse. We're just a few hours from the arrest trial and crucifixion of the
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Lord Jesus. And he has been trying to prepare his disciples for what's going to come in the next few days, and they're really not taking it well.
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And to be more accurate, they really don't understand. They don't fully grasp what is going on.
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They understand enough that Jesus is telling them he's leaving, right? He said, I'm going to go and I'm going to prepare a mansion for you and where I'm going, you cannot go and all these kinds of things, but they don't understand that he's going to die for their sins.
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And then he's going to be raised from the dead on the third day. Now it's amazing that they don't understand that.
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And why do I say it's amazing? Because he's taught them that they were there, they were sitting right there.
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They heard what he said and they still don't get it this morning.
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We're going to be looking at the most important statement about the third person of the
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Trinity, the Holy spirit in all of scripture. Now, how can I say that?
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How can I say that? It's the most important statement about the Holy spirit in all of scripture.
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Well, first of all, it's because it's what I told Brian Bartlett. I would say I did.
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I told him that Brian can verify that later, but secondly, listen to this.
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I ran this by my wife and she asked me if I was going to have a flow chart. No, I thought about it first time ever flow chart.
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This is the second person of the Trinity telling us about the third person of the
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Trinity at the direction of the first person of the Trinity as brought to John's remembrance by the third person of the
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Trinity. Write that down. Say a three. I'm going to repeat it. This is the
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S this is the second person of the Trinity, Jesus telling us about the third person, the
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Trinity, the Holy spirit at the direction of the first person, the Trinity, the father as brought to John's remembrance by the third person of the
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Trinity, the Holy spirit. So why is it so important? It's because again, we're getting,
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John is just kind of pulling that curtain back and showing us how the Trinity operates. He's revealing to us kind of the inner workings of the
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Trinity. Now, first verse 25, we have to note this, that Jesus is soon to leave.
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He is soon to leave these things. I have spoken to you while I am still with you.
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Jesus said, and the emphasis again is on this interaction. He's had this dialogue he's having with the disciples in the upper room.
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And I noted last weekend, it was in our texts where Judas Iscariot, Judas, not Iscariot, sorry.
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Maybe we should call him on Iscariot. Um, he's just asked a question and the disciples have been asking questions.
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They've been trying to grasp what Jesus is telling them, trying to unpack what it is that he's saying to them.
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And notice that when he said there, I have spoken, it's the perfect tense. And it's really an emphasis just on this evening, the last supper, as it were, as he's meeting with his disciples.
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And I think that part of that, the reason he's emphasizing this is because it gets back to the emotions of the
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Knights. They're downcast. They're distraught. The disciples are Judas Iscariot has left to go betray
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Jesus to perform his act of evil. And even though, and that's true, even though most of the disciples don't know that he's the betrayer, a couple of them do.
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They've also heard Jesus tell Peter that he's going to deny the master before he dawn three times.
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They know that he's leaving. There's all this talk about his death, even if they don't quite get it.
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And it's so emotional. What happens when great emotion comes upon you? You know, I think if you think about it this way, if you've had somebody close to you die, well, or even let's look at the other end, you know, when there's a new birth in the family or when something really exciting has happened happening, do you remember everything that has said, or does it kind of just kind of all blur together and you remember some things, you forget other things.
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And then somebody will say, well, don't you remember? I told you that, you know, it's like, maybe your wife will say, please stop by the store and get some milk.
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And you're like, well, I forgot that in light of all these other things happening because they're just mundane and you don't remember them.
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It's so emotional that they're not likely to remember everything that he says. And how can I say that?
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Well, because we have the next verse and we're going to get there in a second. And he says, while I am still with you, it's that constant kind of clock ticking in the background, as we just kind of grind forward to the arrest of Jesus in just a few hours.
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Now I have a couple of questions. First is who is the Holy spirit? Who is the Holy spirit?
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I've said it before. He is a person. We did a comprehensive of a study of scripture.
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I could show you that he has understanding. He has a will, he makes decisions.
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He gets grieved. We see the elements of personality over and over again. In fact, the
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Bible talks about how he regenerates. He acts, he does things. Spurgeon said this
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God, the Holy spirit is not an influence. He's not an emanation, not a stream of something flowing from the father, but he is as much an actual person as either
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God, the son or God, the father. So he is a person.
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He's also a helper. Look at the text verse 26, but the helper, the word, the
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Greek word is paracletas and it means one who comes alongside one who appears on another's behalf, a mediator and intercessor.
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And originally it was given in a legal setting, kind of like a lawyer, a barrister, a representative, but here it's given a far deeper meaning.
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He does come alongside and you know, some of your translations will say a comforter, some will say a helper.
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There may be other words that are used. And remember when we talked about another helper, we said that it's another of the same kind.
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So he's the same kind as Jesus. He is fully
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God. He's equal with the son and the father. And just as Jesus intercedes with us, for us, with the father, so the
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Holy Spirit intercedes for the father with us, right?
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He is the one who convicts us of sin. He is the one who, well, he judges the world in terms of sinfulness and everything, but he is the one who intercedes for the father with mankind.
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Now here's one that's kind of obvious in verse 26, he is holy. And you might think, well, that's just too obvious to even mention.
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Well, it's important for a couple of reasons. One is in ancient Greek thoughts, when you talked about spirits, what were you talking about?
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You were generally speaking, talking about demons. You weren't talking about good things. And some of the spirits that they would talk about were good, but they were either on their way to being better, or they were on their way to more evil interpretive and the
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Jews, the early and the early Christians, uh, they divided intelligent spirits into two groups, angels and demons land.
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Morris said this for the first Christians, the most important thing about the Holy spirit was that he was holy.
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His character mattered most of all. Why? Because it distinguished him from all the other spirits.
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When you said the Holy spirit, you were talking about one who was unlike all the other spirits in that he was entirely holy, separate from sin in full possession of all the moral perfections of God.
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Furthermore, this tells us something about what he does. The fact that he's holy tells us something about what he does in us.
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If you recall Galatians five versus 22 and 23, this is what the
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Holy spirit, what he does in the lives of believers. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control against such things.
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There is no law. Now, even as we think about that list, and you think maybe about churches that you've been into of a more charismatic bent, is that what you see when they talk about the ministry of the
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Holy spirit? Do they have a time where people come out and practice their, let me, let me just get to that list again.
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Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control. Is that what we see in charismatic churches or do we see people roaring like lions, barking, laughing as though drunk, thrashing about on the floor.
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Remember years ago, probably about, uh, 2000, 2001, something like that.
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I went to this gigantic place in Pasadena called the Mott auditorium. And one of the more still famous prophets from Kansas city was there that night.
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And we walked in and we did this, I, I, a friend asked me to go. And for a variety of reasons,
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I eventually agreed to go. It was bizarre.
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I mean, there was, there was, I mean, here I am, I'm not, I'm not a small guy. And, you know, at the time
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I was still a police officer and here I am standing, you know, we're some ways away from the stage and they started, you know, having their spirit time.
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And this young woman behind me, she must've been all of about five, two and about 85 pounds.
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She started making noises and I looked back at her and she was contorting her face and making these animalistic sounds.
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And I'll tell you what I was afraid. I was genuinely afraid. And I wasn't thinking, oh, thank you for this manifestation of the spirit.
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I was thinking, is she going to attack me? Is she feral? What is wrong with this person?
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That is not the work of the Holy spirits. That's the kind of work, frankly, that you would expect from unholy spirits.
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That's the kind of thing we think of when we, when we read about the demon possessed in scripture, the
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Holy spirit does not cause flopping around. He does not cause fake tongues, phony interpretation.
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Or false prophecies. One thing does that it's sinful pride.
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It's wanting to appear as if the Holy spirit is upon you. The Holy spirit takes up resonance in believers, not to, so they can demonstrate all these cool powers they have, but to make believers more like Jesus, that is to say, to make them holy, to sanctify them, to give them the fruits of the
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Holy spirit. That's why he takes up residence in you. Why does he do that?
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Because we can't do it on our own. So the spirit empowers us so that we might grow in respect to holiness.
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He is holy. He comes into us that we might be more holy.
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Another question back to the flow chart, who sends whom?
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I think I did that right. Who sends whom? Look again at verse 26, whom the father will send in my name, talking about the
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Holy spirit, whom the father, the helper, or the spirit, the helper, whom the father will send in my name, listen to a
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John 15, 26, just a chapter forward here. But when the helper comes, whom
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I will send to you from the father, the spirit of truth who proceeds from the father, he will bear witness about me.
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So a chapter down the road, instead of the father sending him in Jesus name, we see,
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I will send to you from the father and that he proceeds from the father.
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Isaiah 48, 16. You don't have to turn there, but you might want to write it down. And the way I remember
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Isaiah 48, 16, by the way, first of all, Isaiah is one of my favorite books in the, in the Bible. So I just think
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Isaiah automatically. But if you think 48, 16, what is 48 divided by 16?
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Three. Thank you. And so I think Trinity, right? And by the way, just a little aside, don't ever do this.
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Do you never, never do what I did, right? I had the, I had the Jehovah witnesses come to my door. I probably, maybe
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I've told you this before, but I had them come to my door and I was so convinced that I was going to convince them of the
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Trinity by going to Isaiah 48, 16. I was so convinced that I took their copy of the
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Bible. I'm like, surely they haven't changed Isaiah 48, 16. I took their Bible and I read it and guess what?
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They changed it. There's, there's no heresy that they haven't implanted in their version of the scripture.
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So Isaiah 48, 16, and this is the pre -incarnate Jesus talking.
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You can look it up and look at the context. He says, draw near to me, hear this.
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From the beginning, I have not spoken in secret from the time it came to be,
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I have been there and listen. And now the Lord God Yahweh has sent me and his spirits prophetically looking down and saying that Jesus was coming and sending the spirit as well.
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We see this inner Trinitarian action where the father sends the spirit.
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Jesus sends the spirit. And by the way, who did the father send in addition to the spirit?
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He sent the son. So I could summarize it this way because I did summarize it right here in my notes.
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The father sends the son of the spirit. The son sends the spirits. The spirit is sent, but never sends.
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And the father sends, but is never sent. This is called the economy of the
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Trinity. They have different roles. Spurgeon says this, he says, there are the three persons mentioned, all of them doing something for our salvation.
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I will ask, says the son, I will send, says the father, I will provide comfort and counsel, says the
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Holy spirit. This is what the Trinity does. They all work together to accomplish the task of glorifying the triune
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God. Now, point number four here, the
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Holy spirit is a teacher. He is a teacher. He is not into flopping.
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He is into teaching. Look at verse 26. He will teach you all things.
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He will teach you all things. And I draw your attention to the he why? Because again, as we saw,
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I think it was last week, there is a particle there, which emphasizes the fact he is a, he it's not needed grammatically, but it's there.
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It's inserted to emphasize that the Holy spirit is a he why?
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Because God has chosen to be understood this way. And he said, well, isn't that just part of the patriarchy?
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You're probably not saying that. Isn't this just sexism writ large, you know, now imported onto the
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Holy spirit? No, God, the father,
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God, the son, and God, the spirit are identified as male. To suggest as some do that God is a, she is blasphemy.
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It is rank blasphemy. It is denying how
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God describes himself. It's not funny. It's not intellectual.
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It's just flat out blasphemous. And one of the lowest forms of blasphemy. Now, when
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Jesus says all things here that he will teach you all things, he's not talking about physics.
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He's not talking about, you know, I don't know, quantum something or other.
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He means everything that is necessary, not only for your own salvation, but for the work of witnessing to tell other people about Jesus Christ, turn over to John chapter 16 verses 12 to 14 for a moment,
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John 16 verses 12 to 14, Jesus still talking to the disciples and he says,
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I still have many things to say to you, but listen, but you cannot bear them.
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Now, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you all the things that are to come.
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Now, first I would note, doesn't that sound like what Jesus said about himself? Didn't speak on his own authority.
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What did he do? He said exactly what the father told him. And so here he says of the Holy spirit, he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and look at verse 14.
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He will glorify me, the savior for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
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The Holy spirit always points to the Lord Jesus Christ. But again, notice there are truths that the disciples cannot handle yet.
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They're not ready. They cannot bear them. He says in verse or in chapter 16, think about all that's going to happen here in the next few days, the trial, the crucifixion, the resurrection, then 40 days with Jesus.
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And then the Ascension, all these things, all this teaching, they're not ready for this just yet.
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And especially in the, in this moment where they're so depressed, but think about this back to John 14, he says, he will teach you all things.
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I'm going to read you a familiar verse out of second Timothy three 16. And I want, I want us to just think about it for a moment.
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Paul wrote this, all scripture is breathed out by God. Now, you know what that means?
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The breath of God, right? It's breathed out by God. That scripture right there, that part of that scripture is really foretold by Jesus himself right here in John chapter 14.
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He says, the Holy spirit will teach you all things. He's talking to these 11 men when people liberals in particular, but many evangelicals deny the inerrancy, the infallibility, or even the sufficiency of scripture.
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They say the Bible isn't enough. It is the equivalent of denying the accuracy of what
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Jesus just said. Look again, verse 26, he will teach you all things, all things doesn't leave a whole lot of room for debates, all things.
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If that doesn't include all things pertaining to life and godliness, then maybe
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Jesus was wrong. However, he's just told us that he's speaking on the father's authority.
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So if Jesus is wrong, then what the father told him to say was wrong.
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That cannot be. And again, reflecting back to chapter 16, he will guide you into all the truth and will declare to you the things that are to come.
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If you do not trust scripture, first of all, you don't know what is to come.
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But secondly, you do not trust Jesus. No one claiming to be a Christian can say they can, that they do not believe this passage of scripture or that.
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In other words, they can't pick and choose what they want to believe. Christians believe what Jesus said.
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I had somebody recently write to me and say, well, you know what? So and so believes in God.
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And I said, that's great. The demons believe in God and they tremble, they shudder.
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You need to believe God. You need to believe what he says. You need to take him at his word. You must believe what he has said about his son through the spirit because the spirit teaches the disciples all things.
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And we're going to develop that a little bit more. Our final point, the
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Holy Spirit is an accurate guide. He's going to teach you all things and look again at verse 26 and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
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Leon Morris said the spirit is to be the guide and teacher of the church. Now, note this well, this does not mean that he will make new revelations.
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Rather, he will bring back to the disciples memory all the things that Jesus had told them.
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Now, let's go back and let's just think about their state of mind for a moment. They're despondent, they're discouraged.
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And by the way, they have misunderstood a lot of what Jesus has said. Even just before this, when
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Judas, not Iscariot, un -Iscariot, asked his question, the point of his question was,
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Jesus, why don't you just show everybody who you are? Why don't you be the Messiah? Why don't you establish your kingdom right now?
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Why don't you just end it all right now and just take over? They didn't understand.
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If you recall, Peter, he promised not only that he would never deny the
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Lord, but if we looked at Matthew, he said he would never allow harm to come to Jesus. And this is after Jesus said,
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I have to be crucified, I have to be lifted up. How could they possibly remember what they didn't understand?
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How could they remember anything that Jesus was saying right now when they were so distraught? Furthermore, as we've said on multiple occasions,
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John wrote this gospel around 90 A .D. Well, newsflash, he's probably about 85 plus.
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He might be in his early 90s. He's an old man. How could he possibly remember what
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Jesus said 60 years before? Here's how.
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Because the Holy Spirit has been charged by the Father and the
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Son to bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
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All that I have said, the I there is emphatic. Jesus is emphasizing it. His words are going to be what the
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Spirit brings to their minds, not generally what he was talking about, not the subject matter, not some kind of summary of what he was saying, but his precise words.
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So when someone denies that Jesus actually said something, the gospel say he said, here's what they're saying.
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The Holy Spirit failed. Jesus lied and the father didn't know what he was doing when he told
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Jesus to tell the disciples this. The Holy Spirit cannot fail.
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He's all powerful. He is, in fact, God of God. Jesus cannot lie.
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It's impossible for him to lie because he's got. The father knows everything.
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He has to know everything because he's God. And as a result of the work of the
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Trinity, father, son and spirit working through fallible, sinful men, we have the very words of Jesus in scripture and just give you an illustration or a couple of illustrations.
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Let's look back at John chapter two, John chapter two, and we're going to see exactly what
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Jesus is talking about here. John chapter two, verses 19 to 22.
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I do get a little spoiled because the Sunday school, I just asked for somebody to read these scriptures. Verse 19,
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Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Now, that's a statement.
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It's a statement about the resurrection. The Jews then said it has taken 46 years to build this temple, the physical temple, and will you raise it up in three days?
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Verse 21, but he was speaking about the temple of his body when, therefore, he was raised from the dead after the resurrection.
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His disciples remember that he had said this and they believe the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
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The Holy Spirit brought it to their memory. Let's look at John chapter 12 again at the time of the triumphal entry,
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Palm Sunday. John 12, verse 16, his disciples did not understand these things at first.
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Listen, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remember that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.
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They didn't understand them. They didn't grasp them, but by the power of the
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Holy Spirit sent to them, instructed to teach them all things to bring these things for their remembrance.
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We have them now, you know, people will say, well, how does anybody know, you know, when
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Jesus went to pray by himself, how can we know that that's what he really prayed? All of John chapter 17, how do we know these things?
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Because the Holy Spirit told them this is what the inspiration of scripture is. Now we have to be clear about to whom this promise was made that Jesus would bring or that the
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Holy Spirit would bring these things to their memory. We today, us sitting here, standing here, do not get to claim this promise.
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It is for these 11 men. So the gospels were written by them or through other men as informed by them.
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So we have Matthew written by a tax collector who became an apostle. We have
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Mark written by the apostle Peter's friend who basically interpreted what
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Peter had written and told him and wrote the gospel of Mark. We have
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Luke who put together his account with the aid of eyewitnesses.
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That would be the apostles, the ones who lived with Jesus. And with the aid of the apostle
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Paul, who was taught personally by Jesus for three years in Arabia. And we have the gospel of John written by the beloved apostle.
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All four gospels superintended and affirmed by the Holy Spirit, accepted by the early church and without error in their original manuscripts, and they all testify of Jesus.
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Now, an implication of this is what that if that gift only pertain to those 11 men, then there could be no new revelation.
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There's nothing new to say about Jesus. He is no longer speaking. The canon of scripture is closed.
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So Jesus isn't calling. Jesus didn't come to America. There is no second testament.
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To Jesus and the Quran tells us nothing true about him.
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These words of Jesus were not a license for us or to anyone other than these men to produce authoritative, inspired scripture.
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And when the original audience around 100 AD, when they would have read this, they wouldn't have thought to themselves, you know what?
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Now I can write scripture. They would have understood it as an explanation for why they could trust the gospels, why they should believe them.
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Now, let's kind of summarize some things talking about the Holy Spirit. We just think about the ministry of the
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Holy Spirit. Every one of the descriptions given here would have been said about Jesus before this, he is to bear their, or to be their teacher.
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He is to bear a witness. He is truly a paraclete just as Jesus is, you know, it's, he says another comforter.
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Well, he was the comforter. He was the helper. He was the advocate. Some translations say, and in fact, in first John two, one, we were this, my little children,
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I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father,
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Jesus Christ, the righteous, same word, Jesus is leaving, but he is not leaving his disciples alone.
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The Holy spirit is another of the same kind who will remain with them and enable them to do things they cannot even imagine as they sit here at the last supper.
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Now I've paraphrased something here that I, I copied from Spurgeon. The son says,
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I will ask the father to send another to you. Disciples hear that and say very well, we can trust you for that.
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Jesus says, and he will send the Holy spirits. You see here, the son reveals that there is a covenant between him and the father.
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He asks and the father answers. There is a covenant on behalf of the
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Holy spirit to Jesus says of the Holy spirit, that he will live with you forever. In other words, he makes a promise on behalf of the
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Holy spirits. One person of the Trinity speaks for the other. And how could they, if there were any disagreement among them, if one wished to save and the other did not, then they could not promise on one another's behalf.
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But whatever the son says, the father listens to whatever the father promises, the
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Holy spirit works and whatever the S the Holy spirit injects into the soul that God, the father fulfills.
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So the three together mutually promise on one another's behalf. That's a covenant.
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Call that the covenant of salvation or the covenant of grace. And as a covenant drawn with three signatories at the bottom, father, son, and spirits, what is their covenant about by three unchangeable persons?
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The Christian is secured beyond the reach of death and hell, a
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Trinity of securities, because there is a Trinity of God. This is what the covenant of redemption is all about.
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A pact between the father, son, and spirit to redeem a people for the glory of God.
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Back to the ministry of the Holy spirit was in the text, so I didn't really mention this, but the Holy spirit convicts of sin this morning.
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I would just ask you, are you convicted of your sinfulness? Do you know that you're a sinner? Do you understand the eternal and devastating results of sin?
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One sin separates you from God. One sin is enough to send you eternally to hell.
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Do you know Jesus? Not, do you know about Jesus, but do you know him?
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Do you have a relationship with him in the sense that you love him? Do you believe
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God? Have you believed on the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you been sealed by the Holy spirit?
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If you haven't been, I would urge you to repent, to confess your sins, to acknowledge your sinfulness, to believe in the
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Lord, Jesus Christ, his perfect life, his death. And on the third day, his resurrection, the ministry of the
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Holy spirit, not only convicts you of your sin, not only seals you for the day of judgment, but it gives us
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God's Holy word that we can trust it, that we can know every word in here is
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God breathed and granted to us for our sanctification and for the salvation of those who don't believe yet.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the ministry of the
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Holy spirit, not only in preserving your word over the centuries against attacks of men who hate you and therefore hate your word.
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But father, we thank you for giving us the very words of our
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Lord Jesus Christ that we might get to know him in a very real and personal way that we might be able to see his wisdom, his love, the amazing words and teachings of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Father, teach us to cherish these things, to think not when we see scripture, just that these are words from some old book, but these words are the very words of our living exalted head, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Lord bless each one here.