John 15:26-27: The Spirit Filled Life

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you.

Well today we come to the end of John chapter 15 as we inch closer and closer to the arrest of Christ.

I hear laughing when I said inches closer. We are inching closer.

As we've noted a few weeks ago, Jesus and his disciples have been in the upper room. They've eaten the

Passover meal. They've had Jesus kneel down and in the greatest act of selfless sacrificial love, he washes at his disciples feet, which is the task of a common servant.

We've seen Jesus predict the betrayal that is going to happen through the man Judas, who the

Bible calls the son of perdition, and we've seen the most famous discourse unfolding before our eyes.

This discourse of Jesus, this teaching that he gives in John 13 through 17, which is called the upper room discourse.

That's what we've been in for the last several weeks. And what the upper room discourse is, it is a series of last -minute encouragements, last -second warnings, and final preparations for his disciples as they prepare to live life without him.

Jesus said, I'm going away. I'm going to the Father. And you're gonna be hated by the world.

You're gonna be persecuted. You're probably gonna be killed and murdered, but upper room discourse, here's how you're supposed to live in the midst of all of that.

Now what I find fascinating about this section of Scripture is how much data, how much words, how much detail is dedicated to the upper room discourse.

30 years of Jesus's life is just a couple of verses. You've got the infancy narrative, you've got

Egypt, you've got the temple, and it's done. Just a few verses for 30 years of Jesus's life. Then for his ministry, which is three years, you've got the body of the of the

Gospels is mostly dedicated to that. But that's three years for about 15 chapters per gospel, which if you do the math, page per day, it's not a lot of material.

John even says that there's so much that was in Jesus's life that if we were to record it all, it would have filled all the books in the world.

So we don't have everything. We have only what God determined for us to have. But what God determined for us to have in the final three hours of Jesus's life is astounding.

In the final three hours of Jesus's life, in the upper room, in his walk to the

Kidron Valley, and on his way to being arrested, you get four chapters in the Gospel of John, which makes this section of Scripture by far the most recorded section of Scripture in the life of Jesus Christ, bar none.

Even more so than his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. There is more data in the gospel about the upper room discourse than even the crucifixion and resurrection, which

I find to be astounding. And I think that the reason that this is the case is because the point is how are we going to live after the resurrection?

Because we don't get stuck there. The resurrection is not a finish line for the Christians. It's the starting line of what the

Spirit of God is going to be doing in our life from that moment until the end of the world. So this section of Scripture that's entirely focused on how do we live as believers in Christ encompasses the lion's share volume of Jesus's life.

Three hours gets so much attention because it's central to the Christian life. And throughout church history, these passages have been some of the most well -beloved and memorized, and people have used these words to encourage them in their

Christian faith and in their life. This has been an important section of Scripture for 2 ,000 years, and it is important as we dive into it today.

As we labor, as we move towards the arrest. This is Jesus's pregame speech.

His disciples are getting ready to be on the field. Now, not all of this upper room discourse occurs in the upper room.

It starts in the upper room in John 13 at the end of it, and it moves into John 14. And by the end of John 14, they're leaving the upper room.

So the upper room discourse encompasses also parts of his speech that happen outside of the upper room.

We remember in John 14, Jesus tells his disciples that we need to leave the city, which would have meant go in the darkness.

And they would have walked out of the upper room area, which was in the nice part of town. And they would have went down towards the southern part of town to this gate called the beautiful gate.

They would have exited the beautiful gate and they would have walked down the hill into the

Kidron Valley and they would have walked towards the Garden of Gethsemane where John chapter 17 occurs.

Now, John chapter 15 and John chapter 16 likely then occur in the Kidron Valley. Likely occur on this walk that Jesus is leading his disciples in the middle of the night in the dark towards the

Garden of Gethsemane. And it's an interesting way of viewing it because as he's walking towards the garden, he's talking about fruitfulness.

He's talking about bearing fruit. As he's walking to the region's most well -known garden, he's talking about what does it look like to live a life that bears fruit that will remain.

So it's fascinating that this was on his mind and on his heart as they walked towards the garden.

Now at the same time that Jesus is giving his disciples this last -minute speech,

Judas is in Jerusalem speaking with the Pharisees and plotting Jesus's demise. If you remember, he went secretly in the night in John 13 and he went the opposite direction.

He went north to the Temple Mount and he met with the same Pharisees that he met with back in John 12 when he sold

Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver and he reported to them exactly where the

Lord Jesus was heading. Now we can speculate how he knew that. He could have known that, the text says, because it was one of Jesus's favorite spots.

It could have been that everyone knew after dinner they were going to go to the Garden of Gethsemane. But either way, he knew where they were going and this was attractive to the

Pharisees because the Pharisees did not want to arrest Jesus in Jerusalem.

That's the worst possible thing that could have happened because if they would have arrested Jesus in Jerusalem, the disciples, we saw

Peter pulls out a sword and cuts off Malchus's ear. So a scuffle would have happened in the city.

People would have gotten out of their beds and they would have seen it and Jesus was the most famous itinerant preacher. In that time, especially, there was hundreds of thousands of Galileans who had come to the city of Jerusalem for Passover.

So these are people Jesus had ministered to for the last three years in Galilee. The city would have fallen out of their control had they done this in Jerusalem.

Rome would have stepped in and brutally put down this insurrection and it would have been violent and the

Pharisees would have lost in every single way. So what do they do? Judas goes to them and says he's leaving the city.

He's going to a little private garden near the Mount of Olives. You can go and you can arrest him quietly.

You can squash whatever rebellion his disciples put up. They don't have many swords. Trust me.

I was just with them and when you do, you can gag and lead Jesus back into the city.

You can throw him in a prison cell. You can have your mock trial. You can drum up whatever evidence you need to murder him.

You can get Rome to sign off on it. You can do all this before breakfast so that the city doesn't find out what you're doing and the

Pharisees jumped on it like white on rice and they assembled the squadron.

You guys ever heard that phrase? Maybe it's a southern thing. They assembled the squadron that was going to go arrest

Jesus and what I find fascinating about this, if you think about this in terms of a movie, Jesus is teaching his disciples how to be fruitful at the exact same time

Judas is talking about how to destroy Christ. These conversations are happening simultaneously.

One near the garden of Gethsemane, one near the temple, which is supposed to be the house of the living God. It was in this backdrop that the

John 15 narrative comes about. This idea of imminent suffering and persecution is getting ready to happen.

Judas and his brute squad are getting ready to come and arrest Jesus and scatter to the disciples. It's in that backdrop that this text exists.

That the disciples are going to be like sheep without a shepherd and it's for this reason

Jesus promises them that they will not be left alone. They will not be left forsaken, but they will have a helper who will come and who will help them in their moment of greatest need.

Jesus is preparing to leave so he's going to provide them with a helper.

So if you will turn with me to John 15 26 through 27 because today we're going to be talking about the helper that Jesus promised to his disciples and we're going to be learning five truths about this helper that Jesus promised.

We're going to learn what his name means as helper. There's going to be five sub points there and then we're going to learn four additional truths.

The Holy Spirit helps us know God. The Holy Spirit helps us have a word -saturated life.

The Holy Spirit gives us a Christ -centered life and the Holy Spirit helps us to engage in mission.

He is our helper and he's here to help us do the things that Christ has commanded that we do. So if you will join me in John 15 26 through 27.

I'll read the text. When the helper comes whom

I will send to you from the Father, that is the spirit of truth who proceeds from the

Father, he will testify about me and you will testify also because you have been with me from the beginning.

Let's pray. Lord as we consider the helper that you have given us this morning, let us remember that we have not been left alone, that we've not been forsaken, that we've not been parachuted behind enemy lines without radio to our into the communication tower.

Lord, you have done even better than that. You have ascended to the throne of heaven, sat down at the right hand of God, ruled over your church, and sent your

Holy Spirit to be present with us individually, present with us corporately, and present to aid us in the mission that you've called us to, which is to retake the earth.

Lord, we thank you for your Holy Spirit. Help us today to learn more about who the Spirit is.

Help us to appreciate the work that the Spirit does and help us not to fall into the trap that so many fall into of giving all the attention and focus and spotlight on to the

Spirit. Help us to follow the Spirit's leading and putting the spotlight on to Christ. Lord, it's in your name that we pray.

Amen. Holy Spirit is our helper. That word helper is very important.

Jesus does not use the title Holy Spirit in this passage where he does in other passages. He uses terms like the

Spirit of truth, which is fascinating, and we'll look at that in a moment. He uses terms like the one who testifies, which we'll look at again.

But the term that he uses for the Holy Spirit is a term in Greek called parakletos, which means helper, advocate, or comforter.

Now, I think in order for us to understand who the Holy Spirit is, first we need to understand what that word means, because that word has not been given in a vacuum.

When we come to the New Testament, especially in the Greek New Testament, these words are not invented by Christians, but they existed for a long time actually in the

Greek culture, and they mean things in the Greek culture. So there's about five things that this word actually meant for hundreds of years before the

New Testament, so that when Jesus adopts this term, being sovereign and infinite in all his knowledge, he's using a term that would communicate meaning to people who already knew what the term meant.

So there's five things. The first thing that this word means in the ancient Greek world was a defense attorney.

The parakletos was like an attorney, someone who would be in a courtroom there to support you. He's an advocate.

He's a defender. If you found yourself accused of a lot of crimes, you would call upon the parakletos to come and support you and aid you in a court of law.

It's the same thing that happens today as a modern defense attorney who supports his client by going to bat for him before the judge, and the

New Testament uses this term that way when it refers to the Holy Spirit. First John 2 .1

says, my little children, I'm writing these things to you that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the

Father Jesus Christ the righteous. Now this one, this term is being used of Christ who is our defense attorney.

Now we get the picture of a heavenly courtroom scene, God being the perfect and righteous judge and all of our sins being opened up before this judge and the obvious verdict for our lives, the gavel should fall down on the guilty verdict.

The heavenly courts have been sat in the jury box. Everyone has listened to the account and the telling of our life, and the only possible righteous verdict for our life is guilty.

Except for the fact that we have a good and faithful attorney. One who has taken our punishment for us.

Can you imagine a courtroom scene like this? You imagine Johnny Cochran going up and saying, I'll take

OJ's burden. I'll take... No, he would never do that. That glove don't fit.

But with Christ, Christ looks at us and all our sin and all our misery and all our failings and he says,

I'll pay for that. I'll take that. I'll die the death that they deserve.

He's a good and faithful defense attorney for us, a parakletos for us. He's our advocate in heaven, the

Bible says. But the Bible also uses this term of the Holy Spirit in John 15 26, the passage that we're in and it calls the

Holy Spirit our advocate, which means that he also is playing a sort of role for us, but not in the courtroom of heaven.

The Holy Spirit is representing us in the courtroom of public opinion, in the courtroom of the world, in the courtroom of men and women who are gonna turn against us and who are gonna malign us and say all manner of evil against us.

Think about the context. Jesus is talking about a situation where they're getting ready to be persecuted and he promises a spirit a parakletos to represent them, to represent them against all accusations, to represent them against all the hatred that the world can throw at them and they did.

Hostile world berated the disciples, killed the disciples, persecuted them, chased them all over the world, martyred them and the

Holy Spirit's job in that was to defend them on earth even as Christ is defending them in heaven.

We have a defender. We have two defenders. We have a team, a power attorney team in Christ and the

Holy Spirit who will not leave us or forsake us as hostility arises.

That's the first way that this term is used, parakletos, defense. Holy Spirit defends us.

The second is a mentor. If you think about it like in a job setting, there's often senior people in jobs.

And if you're in a good job, maybe you're not at a good job. Maybe your senior person is competing with you and trying to crush you.

There are situations like that. But maybe you're in a good job and the person who's senior to you actually is trying to help you.

They help you learn the ropes. Like a captain will sometimes come alongside of a second lieutenant or like a vice president will come alongside of someone who's in junior leadership and will help them learn how to do the things that they've been called to do by their

CEO. Well in the same way, the Holy Spirit is senior to us.

He's omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal, transcendent in glory, matchless in all perfections and he's so far senior of us that it makes no sense for him to stoop to us and help us and yet by the grace of God he does.

It would be like the greatest King stooping to help the lowliest orphan and yet infinitely more so than that.

And he helps us. He stoops down and comes alongside of us and supports us and helps us to accomplish the mission of our

CEO Christ, our ever -present overseer. I worked hard to make that CEO, by the way.

Some of y 'all still ain't got it. It's okay. The Holy Spirit is our defender.

Before an accusing world and he's also our mentor who helps us do the things that Christ has told us to do.

Acts 9 31 talks about the Holy Spirit in this way. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria enjoyed peace being built up and going on in the fear of the

Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit it continued to increase. So in this moment where the church was being violently attacked by the world, the

Holy Spirit was comforting them and building them up and supporting them and encouraging them and pushing them on in the mission that Christ had given the church.

He is our mentor as well as our defender. The third is that he's a mediator, but this is actually the smallest possible example in the

New Testament. We see this word parakletos for mediator being used of Jesus Christ.

He's the one who bridged the gap between us and God who mended the broken relationship, who assuaged the offending party.

A mediator in the ancient Greek world was someone who went between two parties who were aggrieved and mended the relationship and that is what

Christ did with us. We had offended the Father infinitely so and Christ stood in the gap and mediated between us and God so that we could know the

Father forever. So Christ is our great mediator. It says in 1st Timothy 2 5 for there's one

God and one mediator also between God and men the man Christ Jesus, amen.

So that's clear of Christ. There is an example though of the Holy Spirit being a mediator between us and God and it's in prayer.

In Romans chapter 8, in this glorious, gorgeous chapter with so much truth, so much things to rejoice in God, it says that the

Holy Spirit helps us pray even when we don't know how to pray. He authors prayers that are far too deep and and far too wonderful for us to even understand and he is mediating between us and Jesus.

We're praying but yet he's praying our prayers to Christ. He's mediating our prayers to Jesus who takes our prayers and hands them to the

Father. This is a beautiful example of how the Trinity, the triune God is involved in your prayer.

When you pray, you are not just speaking empty words to an empty room.

You are being engaged with by the triune God who made heaven and earth.

The Holy Spirit is authoring your prayer. Jesus is receiving your prayer and delivering your prayer to God.

You are engaging with God in his triune unity and love when you pray.

Holy Spirit's mediating in that. Number four, he's our comforter.

One of the most well -known meanings of the word parakletos is comforter. In a

Greek culture, if you had a trial that you were going through, if you had a death of a loved one, a friend would come over to your house and they would comfort you.

They would come alongside of you. They would encourage you. That's what a comforter would do and that's what this word parakletos means.

The Holy Spirit does this for us as well. When we're broken, when we're going through trials, when we're going through misery, he comes alongside of us and encourages us and reminds us of the truth of Scripture.

When we're feeling alone, he causes us to remember that we're not alone. When we feel like that we're lost, he reminds us that we're found and he helps us remember who we are because we often forget who we are in Christ.

Romans 8 16 says the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.

How many times have you doubted that you're a child of God? How many times has situations and trials and circumstances made you think, gosh,

I don't even know if I'm a Christian. The way I think and the way I'm acting and the way I'm behaving right now,

I'm not even sure if I belong to Jesus. If you do, it won't be long before the

Holy Spirit will come along and say and testify to your broken spirit you belong to Christ.

There's no condemnation for you. Neither height nor depth nor anything in all of creation can separate you not just from Christ, but from the love of Christ.

The Holy Spirit's there to remind you when you're broken, when you're forgetful, and when you've lost your way.

The fifth thing that this word means is that he's our teacher, that he brings instruction to us, wisdom and guidance to us.

In the Jewish culture that was similar to a rabbi who would take someone under their yoke and who would disciple them.

In the Greek world, it would be similar to a philosopher who you would sit and listen to them opine and blaze on for hours about whatever they were talking about and you would then you would start talking in your sophistry and pretend like you're excellent and smart as well.

Well, we have that today. It's called a university. It's called professors. Professors are the ones who are supposed to bloviate about all the things that they know and you're supposed to nod your head and act like that you're interested and then get a piece of paper that says that you know something.

But if you have a good professor, one who takes interest in you, you'll know what parakletos means.

When I was in seminary, I had one professor. His name was Dr. Roselle. He would email me.

He would check up on me. He would sit down and eat lunch with me. He would encourage me.

He would tell me that he thinks I should, you know, continue writing or that he thinks I should go for further education.

He was just, he would encourage me. He would talk to me about the gospel. He would talk to me about Jonathan Edwards view of justification.

We would just, we would have these conversations constantly and I felt deeply cared for by this man.

He was like, he reminded me of my grandpa, but yet like a biblical scholar version of my grandpa.

And as I was thinking about the sermon, I was thinking about how a good professor takes an interest in the lives of his students and helps them grow and helps them learn and sees the areas of their life where they need to grow and advance and helps them in that.

That's what the Holy Spirit does for us. One of his primary roles is to teach us to look at our life and to see the gaps in our own doctrine and theology and to show us who

Christ is in the midst of that. It says in John 14, 26, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I have said to you.

Now, by all things, it doesn't mean everything that possibly could be known. He's not going to teach you the recipe to your favorite, to your favorite dessert.

He's going to teach you everything that Christ has said, to remind you of all the things that Christ has done, to give you a master's degree over the course of your life in Christ.

That's the Holy Spirit's role in your life. One of the main roles in his life is to teach you what

Christ has said, to remind you of the promises that Christ has made, to encourage you and strengthen you, defend you.

Now, if we were to look at one unifying point that ties all of these meanings in the ancient Greek world of what parakletos means,

I would just say one who's summoned for your aid. The word para in Greek means to come around.

The word kaleo means to be summoned. So parakletos means the one who's summoned to come around you and help you.

Whatever that situation is, whether you need to be defended, whether you need to be mentored, whether you need to have somebody mediate for you, comfort you, or teach you, they have been summoned to help you and that is what

Christ Jesus has done with the Holy Spirit. He has summoned the Spirit of God to be at your side to help you, strengthen you, encourage you for a lifetime.

That's the word para kaleo or parakletos. Now, if that weren't good enough, all of those things, you get all five of those things, oh wait, there's more.

This passage also adds four more things that the Holy Spirit does in the life of the believer and I'd like for us to examine those now.

The first one is that he helps us know God. When the helper comes, this is verse 26, whom

I will send to you from the Father, and just a few words later he says he is the one who proceeds from the

Father. In this passage, we're looking at a person. We're not looking at an impersonal force.

We're not looking at, you know, some Star Wars level incantation or imagination or whatever it is. I've never seen Star Wars, but you know what

I'm talking about, the force, whatever that is, that's not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person and as a person he was sent to us.

The Holy Spirit did not decide on his own to come to us. He was sent not just by the

Son, but by the Son and the Father. Both of them sent him to us, which is actually really good news.

We know from the Scriptures that God first sent his

Son to us to rescue us. That's the mission that he came on. He was sent in his incarnation.

He was sent on mission and that mission culminated in his death, burial, and resurrection and purchase of the saints to be his own forever.

God sent Christ to rescue us, but he did not send

Christ to rescue us and leave us, to rescue us and forsake us. To put his ownership tag on us, but let us walk through life by herself.

That's not what he did. So when Christ ascends to the throne in heaven, both he and the

Father send the Spirit of God to be our guide, to help us.

Jesus said, I'm the one who sends the Spirit. The Spirit's from the Father, which means that both God and the

Son are sending the Spirit. Just like we say in the Nicene Creed a couple weeks ago, we believe in the

Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the

Father and the Son, he is worshipped. That means that all three members of the Trinity again are involved in our redemption.

If the Father sent the Son, the Son sends the Spirit, then all three of them are involved in your salvation.

You have not just been saved by the death of Christ. You've been saved by the decision of God, by the sending of Christ, and by the sending of the

Holy Spirit that bound you to Jesus and united you to the Trinity. The entire

Godhead has been involved in you and in your life and in your salvation.

That's astounding. You and I, pitiful worms, people who shake our fist at God, the same kind of people who assembled at the

Tower of Babel and said, we're gonna do something special, us, to be his people.

The Father and the Son send the Spirit, because the Father and the Son are involved in our salvation just as much as the

Spirit is as well. John Calvin says it this way, For the testimony of the

Spirit would not be sufficient against the attacks so powerful and against the efforts so numerous and fierce.

He's talking about what was getting ready to happen to the disciples. If we were not convinced that he proceedeth from God, so then it is

Christ who sends the Spirit, but it is from the heavenly glory that we may know that it is not a gift of men, but it's a sure pledge of divine grace.

You see, when we get the helper, we also get the sender. When we get the Spirit, when we are indwelled by the

Spirit of God, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Father really loves us. How many people have been disconnected from that?

They say, I'm a Christian. Does God love you? I don't know. He's so disappointed in me. Reject that! If you have the

Holy Spirit in your heart, if you have been given the Spirit of God, the Father loves you. The Father cares for you.

The Father has his smiling face oriented towards you, and he's given you peace. The Son really has died for you.

The Spirit is in you as evidence of all of that. The whole

Trinity participates in your salvation. Do not doubt how much you are loved if you have the

Holy Spirit of God. You are loved like Christ is loved by God.

So be bold in that, be confident in that, be assured in that, that he's given you divine grace, that he's sealed you, that he loves you.

The second thing we see in this passage, technically, I guess it's the sixth or seventh, but you know what

I mean, is that he helps us live a word -saturated life. Jesus says, when the

Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth.

When you're talking about the Holy Spirit, you're talking about truth. The Spirit of God is not separated from truth.

He is truth incarnate. He is truth in perfect clarity. He is not the spirit of confusion.

He is not the spirit of embellishment. He's not the spirit of error or half -truths.

He is the spirit of the truth. This is not like so many churches, and I don't want to bribe bash, but so many churches teach about the

Holy Spirit as if he gives us the secret knowledge, like modern Gnosticism, where that if we just love the

Spirit, he will whisper secrets in our ears that no one else knows, and he will teach us things that no one else could know, that he will lead us into visions and dreams and words from the

Lord's and guttural or guttural blubberings called tongues and other passive, subjective aspects that we rubber -stamp today as ministries of the

Holy Spirit paraded in front of the church as if they're authentic means of grace. The Spirit of God is the

Spirit of truth. John chapter 17, 17 says, sanctify them by your truth.

Your word is truth. Do you see what we have going on here?

The Spirit is truth. God's Word is truth. So therefore the Spirit is the truth, consistent with the

Word. The Spirit does not deviate from Scripture. If the Spirit is truth and the

Word is truth, then the Spirit doesn't deviate from Scripture ever. The Spirit doesn't give peyote -infused messages, wildly, highly imaginative blubberings that we're supposed to decipher as if we just had a bad burrito.

The Spirit only communicates to us in Scripture. He only speaks truth. He only speaks the

Bible. He does not deviate from Scripture when he's speaking to you. So that means when you want to live a

Spirit -filled life, you have to have a Word -saturated life. Because if your life is not

Word -saturated, you are not Spirit -filled. Because the Spirit is truth and the

Word is truth. It's the Spirit of God who inspired the Word. It's the Spirit of God who authored the

Word, who guided the human authors to record the Word, who illuminates Scripture in our hearts, who awakens his people to hear the message of the

Gospel, which is the power of salvation to those who believe. He's the one who unveils the Scripture. He's the one who writes the

Scripture in our hearts. He's the one who bears witness to the truthfulness of the Scripture, convicts our hearts in light of the

Scripture, causes us to repent because of Scripture, and causes us to live in accordance with Scripture, produce fruit consistent with the

Scripture, and encourages us with the promises of Scripture. Everything the Spirit does is tied to the

Scripture. If you are not saturated with the

Word of God, then you are not living consistent with what the

Spirit loves and what the Spirit adores and what the Spirit is doing to work in your life.

How could you be filled with the Spirit while yawning at the very truth that he authored?

You couldn't. In that, he's our helper who connects us to the triune

God, and he's the one who teaches us to love Scripture and to orient our life to Scripture. Those are the first things.

The next is that he will help us have a Christ -centered life. Verse 26 says, He is the

Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, and he will testify about me.

The Spirit is not only bibliocentric, he's Christ -centric. So that if you want to live a Spirit -filled life, you not only need to be connected and saturated with the

Word of God, you also need to be consumed with Christ. There is no Holy Spirit filling.

There is no Spirit saturation. There is no revival apart from a spotlight on to Jesus Christ.

The Spirit testifies of Christ. There's not a passage in the Scripture that says the Spirit testifies of himself.

There's not a passage that says we need to have movements where we overly focus on the

Holy Spirit, we pray to the Holy Spirit, and we ask the Holy Spirit to do this and to do this and do that. The Holy Spirit's job is to shine the light on Christ, to get our eyes off of everything but Jesus.

That's his job. He testifies to Jesus's identity all throughout the

Scriptures. He testifies in Jesus's life and the healings and the miracles and the deliverings of the demoniacs.

He testifies of Jesus in our lives by bringing us to repentance, by reminding us of the things

Jesus said, by causing us to hope in the things Jesus did. He testifies of who

Jesus is by shining his light and his character onto Christ. That's the gospel, not the gospel of the Spirit, but the gospel of Christ.

It's what the Spirit is pointing to. He does not point to himself. He points to Jesus.

We are not tritheist. We do not worship God in the morning,

Jesus at noon, and the Holy Spirit in the evening. The Holy Spirit is pointing us to Christ, God's beloved

Son. That is his role in our life. He testifies to that by leading us to repentance, to repent of our sins that we've committed to our

King and to be reoriented in relationship to him. He testifies about the work of Christ, the love of Christ, the gifts of Christ, the forgiveness of Christ, the cross of Christ, all of it.

And when he does that, he knits you and I to Jesus. He crucifies us with Jesus.

You know, it says in the Bible that you were crucified with Christ. That was the Spirit's work in your life. Think about the miracle.

We were born, I was born 1 ,950 -something years after Jesus, resurrected from the dead.

And yet the Scripture tells me that I was crucified with Jesus as if I lived 2 ,000 years ago.

The Spirit did that work in my life, and he does that in all believers' life. Buries us with Christ in his death, raises us with Christ in his resurrection, awakens us to adore

Jesus in time, baptizes us in Christ to unite us to him and unite us to a people.

The Spirit of God points the spotlight at Christ to weave us into relationship with God so that you will be centered on Christ.

If you want to have a Spirit -filled life, love the Bible and love Christ. Apart from that, there is no

Spirit -filled life. The next is that he helps us engage in mission. This is the final thing.

He says, and you will testify also because you have been with me from the beginning. He's saying that if you want to live a

Spirit -filled life, I'm repeating this because, well, that's the title of the sermon, but also because it's important.

If you want to live a Spirit -filled life, you need to know the triune God. Only the Spirit can do that for you.

You need to have a Bible -saturated life. Only the Spirit can do that for you. You need to have a Christ -centered life. Only the Spirit can do that for you.

And you must live a life that goes on mission. Mission is not the statement that hangs at your office.

Mission is not that vacation that you have to the Andes. Mission is not your desires and your wants.

Mission is what Christ has said. And the mission that Christ has said is his gospel going to the nations.

If you're not engaged in that, you're not engaged in mission. If you're not engaged in mission, then there's an aspect of your life that is totally inconsistent with the

Spirit. So if you want to live a Spirit -filled life, you must be on mission. We use every part of our life to engage in that.

We don't leave life to go on vacation. We use our vacation to be on mission for Christ. We don't leave today to go to our vocation.

We use our vocation to be on mission for Christ. Everything that we do is a part of that mission.

So that we go to work for the glory of God. We enter our family for the glory of God. We pray at our dinner table for the glory of God.

We raise up our children to the glory of God. We go to sleep to the glory of God. We engage in media in a holy way to the glory of God.

Everything we do is a part of the mission of Jesus Christ to bring the gospel to the nations. We work not for a paycheck.

We work not for a promotion. We work not for status. We work not because, well, we like it.

We work to make Jesus known in the nations. That's why we get up in the morning.

That's why we go to sleep at night. Every facet of our existence. It says the Holy Spirit testifies of him and you will testify of him.

The reason it says that is because the spirit of God expects it, that he will become our all consuming passion.

That every aspect of our life will be wrapped up in the mission of God. Missio Dei, God's mission.

Now. There's a lot of believers that I've talked to over the years that believe that this part of the

Bible does not apply to them. They will talk about pastors being on mission or elders or deacons or churches even.

But yet forget that Christ has called them to mission where they are in their life.

If God is sovereign, he knows your circumstances. He knows the people that you hang around with. He knows your family.

And he's given them to you for a purpose. To tell them about Christ. If you believe this doesn't apply to you.

Well, I would like to help clear that up for you. It does. He testified of Christ so that we would testify of Christ, that was his purpose.

And no matter your reason, if you're nervous, it's an illegitimate reason. If you feel timid.

If you are ashamed, if you hate the world like the Pharisees do and you hide in your underground bunker and you're praying that they all just die and burn and go to hell.

Illegitimate reason. If that's you, you're wrong.

You're not aligned with his word. You're not aligned with the spirit. And you can't claim to have a spirit filled life if you're not on mission.

Jesus left us here for a purpose. If he wanted to save everybody that God elected, he could have done so.

He could have snapped his fingers and all throughout church history, he could have saved everyone without our involvement. And then we could have just woken up in heaven.

He did not do it that way because he elected you to be a part of his mission. He elected you to be one of his soldiers.

He elected you to be a part of his mission to win the world to Christ. If that is not where you're at today.

In any of these aspects, if you don't feel united to Christ, repent. If your life is not saturated with the word of God, repent.

If Christ is not everything to you, which I guarantee all of us have some room to repent there, repent.

And if your life is not testifying to the goodness of Christ, if there are people in your life you're too ashamed to speak to about it, people in your life that you are afraid to talk about it, repent.

Because if you want to live a spirit filled life, you'll be connected to the triune God. It'll be saturated with the word of God.

It'll be centered on the son of God, and it'll be testifying of the gospel of God. That is what spirit filled life is.

Let's pray. Lord, this wonderful little passage, just two verses cover such a great aspects of what it means to be saturated with the spirit of God.

Or there's so many people today who will claim. To know what a spirit filled life is, and yet it's right here in the text.

Lord, I pray that you would help us as your people to fall in love with your word, to be word people, to read it, to meditate on it, to study it, to memorize it, to cling to it, to to know it, to teach it to our families and to our children, to hide it in our hearts.

Holy Spirit, I pray that you would cause each and every single one of us to grow in love for the word, to grow in desire, to know it, passion to read it.

Lord, let us not be like the seed that falls among the weeds and the cares, the world choke out the good things that you've given us,

Lord. Let us be like the seed that falls on the good soil and bears fruit.

And Lord, we know a part of that fruit is as being a word centric people,

Lord, would you give us desires and affections and increasing measure that maybe we currently don't have.

And Lord, I pray that you would allow us to see the blessings. That are involved in being in your word, your holy word.

Lord, I pray that we would be Christ centered people. That we would be gospel people.

That we would not fall into the equal damnable traps of. Legalism and antinomianism.

That we would not try to earn our salvation and our standing through our own works, and we would also not go and live whatever way we want, thinking that nothing matters.

Lord, I pray that we would have a all consuming passion for Christ and his gospel that would inform us on how we live and how we carry ourself in a world that's lost and needs to see.

Lord, I pray that as you, Holy Spirit, testify in our hearts of the truthfulness of Christ.

May you give us courage and vigor to testify to those around us. Each and every one of us have names that are popping up in our heads right now.

People who need to know Christ. Lord, let not another day go by where we make excuses.

Let us be like the disciples who turn the world upside down for Christ and Lord, let us take whatever consequences come.