John Jones- Guided Into All Truth

Well, good afternoon, I hope nobody's too sleepy after eating lunch. I am blessed to have the privilege of introducing a brother who I wasn't sure what to think of him when I first met him, but it's been an absolute blessing to get to know him, to know his family.

Big John came to the Lord when he was 25 years old and he's been serving the Lord ever since. He's been a deacon, he's been working in music ministry, he's been an evangelist. Most recently, he is working for the Lord as a pastor.

He has been married for almost 19 years coming up this June and Ashley, if I'm wrong on that, that's what he told me, so you can take it up with him. So they've been married for nearly 19 years. He's counting over there.

They have four beautiful children. Please welcome my brother, Big John Jones.

Good afternoon. Y 'all nervous as I am? Thank you, hey, can't say amen, say oh me. If you have your Bibles, I would like for you to turn. We're gonna look at the book of John, starting in chapter 16. I'm gonna read a portion of scripture and we'll do our best to expound on it in a way that makes sense to me and by God's grace, it'll make sense to you.

I ask that before we begin the reading that you pray for me as I pray for us. I don't pretend to be able to tell you anything that somebody else hasn't already said and something Brother Rob said this morning is I wanna make sure that I fall in line with that.

I don't want to come off as saying something to bring any kind of tension to me personally. It's all about Christ and his church, empowered by his spirit to the glory of God the Father and I wanna make sure that I fall in line with that and that what is done here is done in a way that exhorts God and exalts the church and you ready to pray?

Father, in Jesus' name, Lord, I come to you today and I ask that you move in this house. I know you already have. If you open up our understanding to your word, I pray that what's said here from this place is truth and no other.

I pray that it not be my bend, that it not be anything of me, Lord, but it be all of you. I ask that you bless these people during the reading of the text and the exposition of said text. We'll be careful to give you the glory for it because you're worthy of it.

It's in Christ's name I pray.

Amen.

John chapter 16. These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogue, but an hour is coming when everyone who kills, you will think that he is offering service to God.

But these things they'll do because they do not know the Father or me. These things I have spoken to you so that when their hour comes, you may remember what I've told you of them. These things I do not say to you at the beginning because I was with you, but now I'm going away to him who sent me.

And none of you ask me where you're going, but because I've said these things, sorrows filled your heart. But I tell you the truth, it is for your advantage that I go away for if I do not go away, the advocate will not come to you.

But if I go, I'll send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see me.

And concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. I still have many more things to say to you, but you cannot hear them now. But when he, the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.

For he will not speak of himself but whatever he hears, he will speak. And he will disclose to you what has come. He will glorify me and he will take of mine and they'll disclose it to you. All things that are the Father has are mine.

Therefore I say that he takes of mine and he'll disclose it to you. I've been tasked with describing how we're guided in truth by the Holy Spirit. Oftentimes our aversion to speaking about the Holy Spirit in this kind of way is because his name has been hijacked for people to try to use him for their own selfish and motivational means.

God will not be mocked. He's God and there is no other. This Holy Spirit is as much God as the Father and the Son, which means that he is authoritative in his commands. So when he speaks, we pay just as much attention as if it's Jesus' words in red or if it's the words given by the Father in the Old Testament.

Why is it, do you suppose, that we would need to be led or guided in truth? It's because we have no concept of it. Truth has a name. We think of truth as an abstract thought. Jesus, before Pilate, is talking to him about truth, that what Pilate speaks was the truth whenever he referred to him as a king, right?

And he says to Pilate, answers Christ, and says, well, what is truth? Truth is standing in front of Pilate. He would say in John 14, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Truth has a name. The Holy Spirit is called in this text, the spirit of truth, the comforter.

The word I can't say that Tyler said earlier starts with a P, sounds like it's got something to do with carp. Don't know what it means except for an advocate, someone who'll bear you up, someone who'll walk through this with you.

He's the promise talked to about in the gospel, the consolation of the promise. This is what is intended to empower the church is this promise God sends us, him, not an it. The Holy Spirit is not it, he is God.

He's personable. He can be grieved, he can be upset, he can be angry. We need to be led in truth. Quite simply, everything I'm gonna say could be summed up in really three or four words, but I've got you for a little bit of time, so I wanna look at the application more than I wanna look at the principle of it.

In principle, we have heard for two solid days about being guided in truth, about empowered speaking, about empowered ministry, about, I took some notes whenever the guys were speaking this morning. Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit because he's got, note that, I can't read my own handwriting when it's cold, and Tyler speaks too fast, so I was trying to write it down.

Because of this evil age and us being evil and knowing how to give good gifts to our children, how much more so does God being good give us the Holy Spirit? Yesterday, we were told by Brother Jay that our lack of evangelism is because of our lack of joy.

Where's our joy to come from? The Holy Ghost. Love, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. The spirit of unity that binds the church has got to be God's spirit. If it's God's bride, it has to be God's spirit that binds together the church.

Otherwise, this is a social club and void of any kind of power. Acts chapter eight. If I get nervous, Pentecost will just ask you to turn to Acts in a Reformed church. Yeah, somebody say glory. All right, so before we read, I already want to do something I forgot to do.

I actually wrote it down and still didn't do it.

Bad at my own notes.

Thank y 'all.

All of y 'all at Reformata. Thank you for the way you've treated my family. For the spirit of hospitality in this house. For the love, one for another. I've seen in here. Brother Claude, for having us and opening up your pulpit to me.

I'm humbled by the opportunity and I don't take it lightly. And I understand, maybe more now than I've ever understood, the risk that you have undertook and the confidence it means that you have in these men.

And I thank you for that. And I'll do my best not to upset nobody. Acts chapter eight. Why don't you look at verse 25, back story. Before we read, Philip being used mightily of God in Samaria, fulfilling the second part of what Christ had told him to do with the ascension.

Tear in Jerusalem until you be empowered, right? And then preach the gospel. So there's an order to this. Don't preach the gospel before you're empowered by the Holy Spirit. Then preach the gospel in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the other most parts of the earth.

We've pretty much solidly been preaching the gospel in Judea at this point. Israel has heard the gospel. There's been a massive amount of response from the Israelites to the gospel message to the point that now the church is under intense persecution.

Thank you.

Y 'all terrible eats me up. So Philip has gone to Samaria and what Philip is enduring right now has got to be what us Pentecostals refer to as a great revival. We see people being saved. We see people being delivered, demoniacs freed, those that are lame getting up and walking.

Amazing times. And then by the spirit, Philip's told to get up and leave. Now to me, this harkens on what I've heard about Abraham being pulled up from Ur. Get up and go to a land that I'll show you. God has not changed.

I don't need to tell you where you're going. You just need to listen to what I tell you. That's what being led is. I put the GPS coordinates in to get here from wherever we come from. And I don't need to know every turn, just the next one.

Just the next one. That's all I need to know. I don't need to know five miles down the road if there's two turns before then. All I need you to tell me is what I need to know right now. I don't have the capacity for all of it.

God knows us. He tells Philip, come on. Philip gets up. We find ourself talking to a eunuch from Ethiopia. So when he saw me born witness and spoke, this is 25. So when they had solemnly born witness and spoke, the Lord, they started back to Jerusalem, proclaiming the gospel.

So see, proclaiming the gospel, many villages and Sumerians. But an angel spoke to Philip saying, rise up and go south the road that descends from Jerusalem to Gaza. This is a desert road. So he rose up and went.

And behold, there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court of the official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. And he had come to Jerusalem to worship. And he was returning and sitting in his chariot and was reading the prophet Isaiah.

One version says he was a devout man. The LSB here says he just come from worship in Jerusalem. Think about this for a second. Context. Miles this man has left his home to go to Jerusalem to worship. This has got to come at some kind of an expense to him.

He had to take time off work or whatever. I don't know how Candace is with her PTO. So he leaves to go worship in Jerusalem, right? This man knows something about God. Otherwise, he would have worshiped in a local synagogue.

But because he was a devout man, according to the NASB, I want to say it says devout man. He went to Jerusalem. This is reminiscent of whenever the Samaritan woman and Jesus are talking at the well. So we know you Jews say worship in Jerusalem because that's where God is, is in Jerusalem.

We worship here in the hills. He tells her you worship what you don't know, right? Anyway, this man's devout. But how can he be reading scripture and not know it?

Let's follow along.

He was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the spirit said to Philip, go over and join his chariot. Side note, God knows where you are. And God knows whenever you need to be told something. And the same God who is sovereign over evangelism, the same God who's sovereign over your salvation is the same God who ascends to heaven to send someone when you need him to unlock his truth.

These two men are talking about the same person. One of them knows him by name and one of them knows him by reputation. Philip ran over to him, heard him reading Isaiah and said to him, do you understand what you're reading?

And the truest statement so far that this Ethiopian has ever uttered in his entire life. And this is something that we as the church had better learn to start saying to ourselves, to God and to our pastors and elders.

He says, how can I unless someone guides me? How can I know this word unless someone guides me? I cannot. And he's right. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And the word of God is given to us by the spirit of God.

Who knows the word of God better than God? Answers no one. So whenever we see God's word expounded, it is only done so by the illuminating power of the Holy Ghost. That's the only way that that happens.

And he rightly says, how can I know this lest someone guides me? Fortunately, he serves a God and loves a God who's adequately equipped and has equipped those adequately enough to help him. And he says, what?

Philip said, he got up there and sat with him. Now the passage of scripture, which he was reading was this. As a sheep is led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shears is silent, so he does not open his mouth.

In humiliation, his judgment was taken away. Who will recount his generation? For his life is removed from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip and said, I ask you earnestly, of whom does this prophet say of this?

Of himself or someone else? This is so important that we get this right. I shared some of this with my church Wednesday night. Israel still claims today that the book of Isaiah in the 53rd chapter is talking about Israel.

The common belief system, if you see people polled who are followers of the law currently, they still get this wrong. This is veiled to them, brother Rob. They can't know it because they're not being guided by God in this text.

They're exalting themselves in the text. 10 times out of 10, if you read scriptures and you exalt the wrong one, you get the wrong meaning. It's not applicable. The overview of it doesn't work. It's completely condemnable from one end to the other.

And everything about it will be something the world wants to hear because it'll be an itching ear. It'll be something that tingles the tongue. And we need to avoid that at all costs. Scripture should always do what?

We read it in John, exalt Christ above all of it. The sole point of scripture is to testify of God because if the Holy Spirit's job is to guide us in all truth and testify of Jesus, and we admitted earlier that the Holy Spirit is the one who give us the word, then scripture should in every area exalt Christ above everything, above it all.

So whenever the Ethiopian asked Philip, who was this talking about? I believe there's a power of conviction already at work in him because he's already thinking this can't be Israel. Is he talking about Isaiah?

Because he's dead. And Isaiah undoubtedly historically died in a terrible way. So maybe he was thinking Isaiah was foretelling his own death.

I don't know.

I'm not gonna say what a man's thinking. Or is it of someone else? So when Jesus, Philip opened his mouth and told him how to have his best life now. Told him eight things that makes you a better Christian.

Told him how he can, he too can so exceed him.

I'm done, I'm done. All right, I'm done.

Philip opened his mouth and beginning from scripture, he proclaimed the good news about Jesus to him. We start in scripture. He shows up because he's being told by an angel to go. Let of the spirit to go see a man who's reading scripture who admits I can't understand this scripture unless you tell me.

I need to be guided into this scripture by someone who knows what the author's intent is, what the message is about, who the author is, and whom is the text about. And Philip starts with scripture, starts from Isaiah and takes him to the cross.

Our job as laymen, as ministers, as church members, as disciples of Christ is to know God. It is to know who God is, to be empowered by God, to share this gospel wherever we go. And you should be able to, maybe not all at the same time, but before you leave this earth, it's my desire that you should be able to find someone and take them from where they are to the cross.

You've been there before. There was a time when you were a liar, a cheat, a blasphemer, an adulterer, wherever they are, you've been there too. And all you have to do is tell them how you got where you are.

This part's for Dan. And the eunuch answered Philip, I ask you earnestly. Verse 35, Philip opened his mouth and beginning of scripture, proclaimed the good news about Jesus to him. And they went along the road and came to some water and the eunuch said, look, water, what prevents me from being baptized?

I said, well, look, that was it. Well, all we lacked up to this point was a little H2O. God's provided that, now let's have this baptism. Folks, it was extremely simple. It couldn't be more simple. All of the Old Testament testifies of Christ.

All of the New Testament testifies of Christ. Empowered by the Holy Spirit to make people understand who Jesus is. There's people who have this word, but it's still veiled to them because there is no spirit of God to guide them in this truth.

You can't be their Holy Spirit. You can't. Take a burden off of you. You can tell them about Jesus. You can read them the scriptures, but you can't make them believe.

You just can't.

Take that burden off of you, throw it in the trash can. The flip side of that's true too though. If you're a follower of Christ, this world or this word, I should say, pardon me, this word will make sense.

It is possible to be a follower of Christ, to be soundly saved, to be born again, to be filled with the spirit of God and still not fully understand scripture. All you have to do is ask.

If you, being evil people,.

Know how to give your children good things, how much more will your father, who was good, give you the Holy Spirit when you ask of him? But if you're reading scripture and you don't see Jesus exalted above everything, you're reading it wrong.

If you're reading scripture and there's no desire in your heart to see someone else know this scripture, check your heart. It's a wicked man who knows the cure to cancer, and don't share it. We've got a disease far worse than cancer with far more serious side effects and consequences, and we have an answer.

His name is Jesus. And spirit-empowered preaching, spirit-empowered evangelism, being united in truth, being led by the spirit of truth should have a singular focus. Just like the church is one body, there should be one focus.

We see all throughout this glorious text, one page after another about what God wanted us to know about him, and the lengths he's gone to to give it to us can only be properly discerned whenever his spirit is in you telling you what it means.

So get in his book,.

Get in your prayer closet, spend some time with the Lord, be taught by God, nothing wrong with commentaries, read all the commentaries you want, question and fact check everything you've heard me say, everything somebody else has said from behind this bull, because we're men and we're capable of error, we're capable of mistake and we're not to be trusted any more than anybody else.

Have no authority that you don't have. That name, that title in front of my name, that is six letters, and that's what it amounts to. God is good. Spirit of God is strong within the church. And he will accomplish 100 of what he sets out to accomplish.

Stan, if you would.

Father, I've come to you. And before these people, with what I felt burdened on my heart to say, not one word more, not one word less. I pray that you make the results be what you want them to be. And don't let it be about a name or a man.

Let it be about you and you alone. I pray you bless these people in the reading of your word. I pray that your Holy Spirit guide us throughout the remainder of this day, throughout the remainder of our lives as we study your word.

I pray that you'd be the preeminent subject matter of our hearts and our lives. I love you, Lord. And I thank you for who you are. I praise you for carrying me again. I'm unworthy to tear this word to people, but you've been good to me.

And I thank you for who you are.

It's in Jesus' name I pray.