Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program. I'm glad
you could join us today. And if you'd like to follow along
in your Bibles, I'll be preaching from the book of John, the gospel
of John chapter 14. And the title of the message
is the spirit of truth, the spirit of truth. And of course, what
I'll be talking about is the Holy spirit, the third person
of the Trinity, the Godhead made up of one is one God in three
persons, not three gods true christians are not polytheists
we don't believe in many gods there's one god when the lord
gave moses the ten commandments that gave gave them to israel
that that's how he started there's one god not two not three not
many one god but he exists in his nature in three persons And
this is the majesty of God. God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit. And these three persons are one.
We sing that hymn, holy, holy, holy. God in three persons. And that's not God in three roles
or three manifestations as the modalists say. But it's one God
in three persons. God the Father represents the
sovereignty the rule of the Godhead. And that's why we come to scriptures,
you're going to hear the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God manifest
in the flesh, the Son of God, but equal with the Father in
every attribute of deity. But he'll say things like, I'm
come not to do mine own will, but the will of the Father. Now
what he's talking about there, that's covenant language. And
you need to understand that. In the covenant of grace, which
is the covenant of redemption, the covenant of salvation, God
the Son subjected Himself to the Father in His office as the
Redeemer, as the Savior of sinners, because He had to take the place
of His people. He had to be their surety, You
hear me talk about this all the time if you watch this program.
Christ is the surety of the covenant. Now that means all the responsibility
of the sin debt of his people was laid upon him. And the father
is the one who imputed it to Christ, charged it to Christ. And Christ willingly submitted
himself to the father for the purposes of being the surety
of God's people. and he had to be the substitute
he had to come and become incarnate which means he had to take upon
himself sinless human flesh a human body and soul the incarnation
that's what that's called uh... it was uh... he was uh... his
humanity was formed by the holy spirit in the womb of the virgin
and he subjected himself he uh... condescended to be made like
unto His people, yet without sin, in order to be their substitute. The Bible says in Galatians 4
and verse 4, in the fullness of the time, God sent forth His
Son to be made of a woman, that's His incarnation, to be made under
the law. He had to keep the law. He's
the creator of the law. He's the giver of the law, along
with the Father and the Spirit. but he had to be made subject
to the law to keep the law as the substitute of his people.
And then he had to go to the cross and die to satisfy the
justice of God. He's our Redeemer, surety, substitute,
and Redeemer. The shed blood of Christ is the
salvation of his people. That's what He did as the Son
of God incarnate. So the Father represents the
sovereignty of the Godhead. The Son is the salvation of His
people. And then the Holy Spirit is the
sovereign applicator, you might say, or a plier of all the blessings
that come from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is the
one who brings us under the gospel, and in the new birth, gives us
spiritual life from the dead, and imparts faith, repentance,
perseverance, all of those things, and keeps us under glory. So,
when you hear language like that, where Christ says, like in the
verses that we're coming up to, He's going to say, the Father
is greater than I. Well now, He's equal with the
Father in every attribute of deity. But as the surety, substitute,
and redeemer of His people, as the mediator, the one mediator
between God and men, the Father is greater than the Son in the
sense that the Son represents saved, the elect of God, who
are saved by the grace of God. And He presents us to the Father.
And He's seated right now at the right hand of the Father,
ever living to make intercession for us. Now, in John chapter
14 and verse 15, here he's in the upper room speaking to his
disciples concerning the gospel, concerning events that were about
to happen in his death, burial, and resurrection, all of that.
He speaks a lot about him going away, The disciples were very
distraught and very sad about that. But he says, you shouldn't
be, because this is why I came into the world. And he starts
off here, look at verse 15. This is John 14 and verse 15. He says this, he says, if you
love me, keep my commandments. Now, you know, anytime people
see the word commandments in the Bible, they automatically
think of the Ten Commandments that were given to Israel in
the Old Covenant. And certainly there is a moral
code there in the Ten Commandments and in the whole law of Moses
there's a moral code that spans time and eternity. For example,
the Ten Commandments says, thou shalt not kill. Well now, murder
is a sin. But murder did not become a sin
when God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Murder was a sin before that.
When Cain murdered Abel, Cain committed an awesome great sin,
a bad sin. So the prohibition for murder
and for adultery, for all of those things, the moral code
has always been the law of God. And it's written on the conscience
even of the Gentiles who did not receive the law. Romans chapter
two speaks about that. The Gentile nations who didn't
have the Ten Commandments, they had laws of society. Now there
were times when people were very lawless and it was an awful world
to live in. But whenever you see commandments,
don't always go to the Decalogue and say that, well, Christ is
talking about the Ten Commandments here. If you love me, keep the
Ten Commandments. First of all, the Ten Commandments, along with
the whole law that was given at Mount Sinai, was a moral code
of righteousness that no human being can keep. And you can't keep it perfectly.
Now, you may say, well, we can try to keep it. Yes, you can
try to keep it. but you're going to fail. And
that's what Christ spoke of in the Sermon on the Mount, when
he said, you know, they accused him of being a lawbreaker. Well,
he wasn't a lawbreaker, he kept the law. God manifests in the
flesh, Christ kept the law perfectly. And he said, I didn't come to
destroy the law, come to keep it every jot and tent on, he
did. And then he told him in Matthew chapter five and verse
20, He said, except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the
scribes and the Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter the kingdom
of heaven. In other words, the scribes and
the Pharisees who taught the law, they taught it wrongly. They taught the law as a system
of salvation by your law keeping, by your works. and you'll always
fail. The Bible says, for all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. Well, what is the
glory of God? The glory of God is the perfection
of righteousness that can only be found in Christ. Christ is
my law keeper. I'm a failure when it comes to
keeping the law. And if your hope of salvation
is based upon your efforts to keep the law, I can tell you
right now, you will fail. You have failed and you will
always fail. And if you appear before God
at judgment, pleading your efforts to keep the law, you will perish. You will be condemned. Salvation
is not by the works of the law. So when he says in verse 15,
if you love me, keep my commandments, he's not telling them that if
you love me, you'll be trying to keep the commandments in order
to make yourself right with God. No. Salvation is not by works
of righteousness, which we have done, do, or will try to do.
We are all sinners. The Bible says that by nature,
as we are fallen in Adam and born into this world spiritually
dead and depraved, There's none righteous, no, not one. There's
none that doeth good, no, not one. Good according to God's
standard. I know people who in our eyes,
in the eyes of men and women, we look at them and say, well,
that's a good man. Well, that's a good woman. But when it comes
to a right relationship with God, none of us are good. Because God's standard of goodness
is the perfection of righteousness that can only be found in Christ. And anything less is sin. Anything less deserves condemnation
and death. That's right. I quote this verse
all the time, Acts 17 31, where God commands all men everywhere
to repent because he has appointed a day in the which he will judge
the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained
in that he had given assurance unto all men in that he hath
raised him from the dead. So if you're going to plead your
works, your efforts at the judgment, they must equal the works and
the efforts of Christ, and they won't. So what does he mean? He says, if you love me, keep
my commandments. Well, if you love him, if you
truly love Christ, that means you are a sinner saved by grace,
and that you've been given a new heart, a new spirit, a new desire
to believe in him and follow him and his commandments here
are his word whatever he says when Christ speaks and tells
his disciples to do this and not to do that he's not making
suggestions he's giving commandments and those commandments are to
be followed now will we follow them perfectly No. Why? Because if we're saved, we are
still sinners saved by grace. We still have a warfare within
of the flesh and the Holy Spirit. Paul said it in Galatians chapter
five. He said the flesh keeps us from attaining the perfection
of righteousness that can only be found in Christ within ourselves.
I can tell you I love God. There was a time I did not love
God, when I was in false religion. But when the Holy Spirit brought
me to Christ, He shed abroad that love of God in my heart,
God's love for me in Christ, that was shown in the propitiation
that Christ made for me, that sin-bearing sacrifice that brought
about satisfaction for me. And then he drew out my love
for him. But my love for him is not yet
perfect. I still have too much self-love,
too much selfishness, too much hatred. Somebody said there's
no room in a Christian's heart for hatred. Oh my soul, you don't
know yourself. The flesh, that's fallen sinful
human nature, keeps me from loving God as I desire to do. but I
do love him. I can say that honestly because
I believe in Christ and I want to follow Christ. I have a desire
to do it, not in order to be saved, but because I am saved. And so keeping his commandments
here is following him and seeking to obey him as motivated, not
by legal threats of punishment or mercenary promises of earned
rewards, But it's follow Him and seeking to keep His Word
motivated by love, by grace, by gratitude. And so we struggle
in the warfare of the flesh and the spirit. Now He says, if you
love Me, keep My commandments. The commandment to believe on
Him, cling to Him, rest in Him for all righteousness. The commandment
to repent, to turn away from self and the world. and turn
to Christ, the commandment to love the brethren, to love our
neighbor enough to tell him the truth, all of those things, to
follow him, to forgive as he forgave, to pray as he prayed
in the sense of depending upon the Father, to worship, all of
these things, to try to be a good person, realizing the whole time
that we fall short of the perfection of righteousness, which we can
only find in Christ. And so this is obedience motivated
by love. The faith, it's the obedience
that comes from faith, not from law. And so I hope that's clear
to you. Well, he says in verse 16, he
says, and I will pray the Father, And he shall give you another
comforter, that he may abide with you forever. Now that comforter
there is the Holy Spirit. And that's what he says in verse
17, even the Spirit of truth, which is the title of the message
today. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. And Christ calls
him a comforter here. Now that word comforter is advocate. And the Holy Spirit is our advocate.
in the sense that he stands within us and beside us to continually
comfort us with the peace of God that goes beyond understanding
that we can only find in Christ. Now Christ is an advocate. He's
our advocate in a different way. than the Spirit is. Christ is
the advocate of His people in the sense that He is our intercessor,
standing between the Father and us, pleading the merits of His
blood, His righteousness, on our behalf. 1 John 2 says that. If we sin, we have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. The Holy Spirit
is our advocate, our comforter, in that He continually drives
us to Christ and His Word for peace, for comfort, for assurance. You want assurance of salvation?
Don't look within yourself and see if you measure up. Because
if you do think you measure up, what are you measuring up to?
Not God's standard. Because God's standard, again,
is the perfection of righteousness that can only be found in Christ.
You'll never measure up to that, except in one way. There's one
way that I can say I measure up to the perfection of righteousness
that can only be found in Christ. And that's as Christ stands as
my representative, my surety, my substitute, and my redeemer. And I have his righteousness
imputed, charged, accounted to me legally in the eyes of God. In that sense, I'm a righteous
man, not in myself now. not in my thoughts and in what
I try to do or anything like that, but only as I stand in
Christ as my Lord and Savior. That's why David said in Romans,
or Paul quoted in Romans four and verse six, he spoke of the
blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness
without works. Well, what is that imputation?
Imputed. That means God legally charged,
accounted the righteousness, the merits of Christ's righteousness
to His people. And so they are justified in
His eyes. What is it to be justified? It's
to be forgiven of all my sins on a just ground. And what is
the only just ground? The blood of Jesus Christ. To
be justified is to be declared righteous in God's sight. That
means I'm not charged with my sins. I'm a sinner, but God doesn't
hold them against me. He charged them to Christ. And
I stand righteous in His sight. He's declared me to be righteous.
The Bible says in Romans chapter eight, I believe it's verse 31.
He says, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies. Who
can condemn us? Huh? Who can condemn us? For
it's Christ. Christ died for us. Christ is
our hope. And there's no condemnation to
them which are in Christ. So that's how I'm righteous.
But within myself, in my thoughts, my desires, though I seek to
serve God, motivated by love, grace, mercy, and by faith, I'm
still not perfect in myself. I still have a long way to go,
and I won't be perfect in myself until I leave this wretched body
and go to be with the Lord. Paul said in Romans 7, 24, O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of
death? I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. That's how I'll
be delivered. So he says, I'm going to send
you a comforter, give you another comforter. The Holy Spirit has
always been working in the people of God, even back in the Old
Testament, in the new birth, to bring them to faith in Christ
and repentance of dead works. But there was a prophecy concerning
the new covenant, the new covenant times, and that's the time when
Christ would come in time, do his great work of redemption
on the cross, be raised from the dead and ascend into the
Father. And then the new covenant was
inaugurated in at Pentecost when Peter preached in Jerusalem.
And the Holy Spirit came in a special, powerful, miraculous way. Now he'd already, again understand
now the Holy Spirit had already been working in the Old Testament
in the believers. Anybody who's a believer has
been born again by the Spirit. That goes back to Abel, Abraham,
all of them, if they believed. But in the new covenant, he was
coming in a special way because the gospel was going to be shot
out into the world because God has a chosen people all over
this world, Jew and Gentile. And so Christ speaks of that.
He says in verse 17, even the spirit of truth, whom the world
cannot receive because it seeth him not. What he's talking about
there is the unbelieving world. Now, we're all part of the unbelieving
world by nature. But if we see the truth, if the
spirit of truth comes to us, he's got to reveal himself to
us. And that happens in the new birth
where he brings us under the preaching of the gospel. And
he says, it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but you know him.
You know, back in John chapter one, he spoke of those who received
Christ, who did not receive Christ, and those who did receive him.
And he said, those who did receive him, they were born of God. God
revealed himself to them. And he says, but you know him,
for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. The Holy Spirit
was already in believers. But what He's talking about is
He's with you right now, and He's going to be in you in a
special way. And that had to do with the ministry
gifts of the early church, speaking the gospel in other languages. That's what speaking in tongues
is about. It's not some kind of a heavenly gibberish. Speaking
in tongues, as they did at Pentecost, was the ability to preach the
gospel in a language that you had never studied. I don't know
Spanish, but if all of a sudden I started speaking the gospel
in Spanish, that would be the gift of tongues. And those of
you out there who know Spanish, you'd be able to understand me.
Now, another way that that miracle gift came about is there were
people there that didn't know the native tongue of Peter and
James and John and all of them. And Peter and James and John
spoke it in their native tongue, but the people who didn't know
it heard it in their own tongue. That was one of those gifts.
So if I kept on speaking English like I am now, you can call it
that. If you're out there and you don't
know English, but you know Spanish, you might start hearing it in
Spanish. And that's the miracle. It wasn't
some heavenly gift. It wasn't given to everybody.
That gift is no longer in existence because that was a gift to the
early church. People will argue that, but that's okay. If you
claim to be able to speak in tongues, I ask you, what language
are you speaking and what are you saying? Because if you're
not speaking in a language that's on earth, and if you're not speaking
in that language, the true gospel, it's not a gift from God, believe
me. Well, they had other gifts, the
gifts of healing, even the gift of raising the dead. And the
Holy Spirit shall be in you in a special way. He says in verse
18, I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. Now, comfortless
there means orphans. I'm not gonna leave you orphans.
When I go away, Christ is saying this, he's going to the cross,
he's going to die for the sins of his sheep, He's going to satisfy
justice. He's going to bring in an everlasting
righteousness of infinite value by which God has justified all
of his people. And then he's going to die. He's
going to die and he's going to be buried. He's going to be raised
again. Now he will walk among his people for a time, but then
he's going to be ascended unto the heavenlies. But he said,
when I go away, I'm not going to leave you as orphans. God
is still your father. Christ is still your elder brother,
your savior. So I'm not gonna leave you as
orphans. And he says, I will come to you. He's coming again. In his intercessory
work at the throne of God right now, He is pleading for his people,
and he's keeping his people, and he's going to come again
and take us all into his bosom, his glory, and we'll live forever
with Christ. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1-1-0-2-1. Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia
31707. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.theletterofgrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.