Let's take our Bibles and turn
with me to the gospel according to John, chapter 14. John 14. said, and I pray that I might
remember this, that the Spirit of God might bring this back
to my memory. He said, you have not because
you ask not. And we've got this morning, and Lord willing, Here in another
hour, hour and a half, something like that, it's going to be over. These services will be over. I pray that God pour out a blessing
upon us today. I pray that God bless these words
to our hearts. And that truly we might say,
I'm talking about truly, I'm not just saying this, I mean
this. I pray that God cause our hearts
to burn as the Word of God is set forth and blessed by the
Holy Spirit. I don't have the ability. I don't
have the ability to do it, and you don't have the ability to
drum it up. You can talk a big fight and talk a big game and
try to convince yourself and try to convince somebody else,
but I know this. Unless God blesses these words,
unless the Holy Spirit falls upon us in power and really,
truly causes us to hear, we are going to go through some passages
of Scripture And we're going to tell each other, boy, wasn't
that good? We're just going to use some
words is all we're going to do. But if the Lord gives us a heart,
and from the heart we mean it, and it truly was a blessing,
then truly we can leave this place and say it's been good
and been in the house of the Lord. John 14. Our Lord, and we looked at this
last time in verse 15, He said, If ye love Me, keep My commandments. If you love Me, and I want to
ask myself to listen to these words as the
Lord Himself says to me, Marvin, if you love me, keep my commandments. And by the grace of God, that
I could say, as Peter said, grieved because the Lord asked him three
times. Peter said, You know all things. You know
that I love you. Not as I wish I did. And not by the grace of God as
I shall. But Lord, You know I love You. And Lord, I know this, if I love
You, It's because you first loved me, and gave me a heart to delight
after you, and to long after you, and to seek you. Now, just turn to 1 John 3, because
I need to be reminded. The Lord just said, here's the
thing. That's sad on our part. I just dealt with this last week,
last Sunday. And here's the question that
rises in every believer when the Lord says, if you love Me,
keep My commandments. And I just dealt with this last
Sunday. And you know what a believer
says? Okay, tell me again now. Tell me what those commandments
are. 1 John 3. 23, 24. And this is His commandment,
that we should believe on the name, on the character, on the person
of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as He gave us
commandment, and He that keepeth His commandments And what are
those again, Lord? The ones we just read. The ones
we just read. This is His commandment that
we should believe, trust, entrust ourselves to Him as He's revealed
in this Scripture, Freddie. Not that you believe that there
is a Jesus Christ. The devils believe. that there
is a Jesus Christ, but that we have entrusted our eternal soul
to Him. Lord, You who said that the Father
gave You a people, You who as the Word of God revealed to us
through Your Holy Spirit That there is an everlasting covenant
of grace. Lord, You said that the Father
gave us to You and that You have eternally stood for us and answered
for us. Lord, Your commandments are this,
He loves me. Keeps. Holds to. Guards. Not that I'm keeping with a perfect
obedience. I know I can't do that. But I
keep them as they're hidden in my heart. That's what David said.
Hide, Lord, Your Word in my heart. Lord, You hide. That I might
not sin against You. What? In not believing You. Lord,
if You keep the Word there, It's kept. I waver. I stumble. I doubt. And it grieves
me. If you love me, keep my commandments. And just flip over to 1 John
5, 1-3. 1 John 5, 1-3. Whosoever believeth that Jesus
is the anointed, the scent of God, the Messiah, The one who
in that everlasting covenant of grace, established by God
Almighty, whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is
born of God. And everyone that loveth Him
that begat, loveth Him also that is begotten by Him. By this we
know that we love the children of God. How? We love God. God's people this morning, all
of us here, we're all members of one body. We're His body. We're all one of another. is the love of God that we keep
His commandments. Believing Him, trusting Him,
and loving His people. And His commandments do not grieve
us. It doesn't grieve me to love
Him. What grieves me is where I see
my lack of it. That's what grieves me. Back in John 14. If you love me, keep my commandments.
Lord, how frail I see myself in doing that very thing. But
Lord, You know I do. I love You. And Lord, thanks
be unto You that You would cause me to be seen in You, that Your
righteousness is my righteousness, my holiness before God. And that
because of your blood, iniquity is not charged to me. I'm chargeable. I know I am. I know just enough about myself
to know this. Lord, if you marked iniquity,
if you counted it, if you counted one infraction, who could stand? I'll tell you. admittance of
what I am in myself. This is no empty, cheap excuse
for disobedience. I hate, I hate that I don't walk
consistently as I ought. And that's no excuse. No excuse. Well, we're saved by the grace
of God. What difference does it make? That's the heart of
an unbeliever. That's an unbeliever. Well, it
doesn't matter. It matters. The Lord has revealed
through His precious Word that His people are faithful. My sheep hear my voice. I know
them. I know them in grace, and they
follow me. The one who spoke this to his
disciples, In the days of his humiliation, gave him this great
promise. In John 14, verse 16, he said,
now, I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another
Comforter, that He may abide with you forever. Here's the
mediator. Here's the Lord speaking, speaking
to His people. Speaking to His apostles right
there, but speaking to His church. Speaking to His people. One who's
ever heard by the Father because of his own merit. The Father
does not listen to me in myself because I don't have any merit.
Lord willing, in the next service, I'm going to deal with why God
hears the prayers of His people. Why He hears them. This is the one that Mary spoke
to, Lazarus' sister. And she told him, she said, Lord,
I know that even now whatsoever thou would ask of God, God will
give it thee. He said, I will pray the Father
and He shall give you another comforter. He's getting ready
to leave. He's leaving. He's getting ready
to go to the cross. He's going and ascending back
to his Father. And he said, I'm telling you,
I'm giving you my word. You write this down. You keep
this. You can live and die by this Word. I will pray the Father
and He shall give you another comforter. Not if you're worthy
enough or not if you're faithful enough. The reason you keep My
commandments is because you love Me. And the reason you love Me
is because I first loved you. And I gave you a new heart. I
gave you a new will. And I'm going to pray the Father,
and He shall give you another comforter, another consoler,
one that will teach you, settle you, be with you. He's going
to abide with you forever. He's going to live within you.
That's Christ Himself by His Holy Spirit. Here's the Spirit of God prayed
for him. He had to try unity. One God. I will pray the Father that He'll
send a Comforter. What comfort knowing who's asking? I can ask, but He asked. The Lord was leaving, but He
said, I'm not going to leave you comfortless. I am going to
send one through my Father that I'm asking, that will send. He's
going to be with you, minister to you forever. Even verse 17, the Spirit of
truth, whom the world cannot perceive, because it seeth Him
not, neither knoweth Him, but ye know Him, for He dwelleth
with you and shall be in you. The Spirit of Truth. I know that He's the one that
applies the truth. He's the Spirit of Truth. The
Spirit of God that applies the truth of God in Christ to that
new heart. Not the old heart. God Almighty
does not speak to that old heart. It's dead. It's dead. He said, I'm going to remove
it. I'm going to behead it. The presence of it's there. And
you feel the effects of it. Before God gave a man and woman
a new heart, that old heart didn't bother them a bit. They don't
care. They have no interest in God Almighty. But He gives them
a new heart, and I'm telling you, the first thing they recognize
is that old heart. That old presence that's beheaded.
And it grieves them. But the Spirit of Truth who applies
and guides and sets apart and teaches God's people. And they do grow in grace. They
grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ. And you want to know the evidence
of a man or woman that's growing in grace. They see more and more
of what they are. And it's like they're going this
way. The older they get, the more
the Lord teaches them, the more they're grieved with themselves.
This world and its empty promises, it grieves them. Believers walk
in this world as pilgrims and sojourners. And the Lord, as
He teaches them, and they see of themselves, long to be with
Him. He's the Spirit of the truth.
If, as I said a moment ago, if God teaches us anything, through
His Word. And our hearts truly are made
to rejoice and burn the knowledge of Him. It's because He who is
the Spirit of the truth, He's the life of the truth. He who
gives life and spirit to the truth. Because He's the Spirit
of truth. He teaches us. And we walk after
Him. He said, I'm going to send the
Spirit of truth whom the world They cannot receive. They will
not and they cannot. They cannot. They cannot because they see
not Him and they don't know Him. As I said a moment ago, this
old heart cannot receive the things of God. It cannot receive
them. A dead heart is dead. It's dead. I said last week, Mr. Spurgeon
said this, he said, when a dead man can resurrect himself out of
the grave, when a dead body can crawl out of the grave, he said,
that's when you would expect that a dead sinner, spiritually
dead, could resurrect himself back to life. It's just not going
to happen. They cannot. They cannot. Because it sees him not by faith. It doesn't see him. It doesn't
know him. It does not know him in grace.
It doesn't know him in life. They don't know him. They cannot. This is why, I mean, you must
be born again, Nicodemus. Can a mother enter back into
his womb a second time? The Lord said, Nicodemus, you're
a ruler of the Jews and you don't know these things. He was revealing
what the Lord knew he didn't know. Bringing up to Nicodemus
and just abasing his pride. You're a ruler of the Jews. You're
a teacher. You're one of the professors.
You're one of the doctors? And you don't know these things?
You must be born again. Man is not born again, not regenerated
by the grace of God. He cannot see the kingdom of
God. But you know Him, the Lord said
to His apostles, for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you. The work of the Holy Spirit is to separate God's people.
He calls them out of darkness. He seals them by power, mercy,
and grace. He teaches them and He stays
with them. He stays with them. He shall
be in you. I stop in closing and I think,
Lord, You who have promised that you'd send the Comforter. Lord,
this morning, can it be that, Lord, You've given me Your blessed
Spirit and have consoled this old needy sinner and given me
a heart, Lord, that loves You and calls on You that is reminded
again and again, and I need to be reminded again, how, Lord,
You've everlastingly loved me. And as You've taught me and shown
me myself, and Lord, You've given me comfort. Lord, I can rest
there. In myself, I have absolutely
no confidence. But Lord, that You taught me.
You gave me life. You gave me spirit. You gave
me hope and peace and revealed that to me. And Lord, in eternity,
when there was You only, When there was no earth and no sky
and no stars and no mountains and no seas, when there was You. And the thousands and thousands
and thousands of years, Lord, that's passed since then, that
then, Lord, that You entered into a covenant with the Father
and the Spirit And you had me on your mind, on your heart? That you knew Marvin when there
was nothing else? Thank you for that comfort. Lord,
keep me, for Christ's sake. Amen.