Number 13, hallelujah, what a
saviour. Man of sorrows, what a name for
the son of God who came. Ruin sinners to reclaim. Hallelujah, what a saviour. Thanks, Noel. you. you what a Savior The world celebrates a resurrection
on a particular day of the year, and I celebrate the birth of
the Lord Jesus on a particular day of the year. I pray that
we do it every time we meet. I pray that we do it every time
we meet. I'd love for you to turn with me to John chapter
14. And I want us, and I pray that
we would find our troubled hearts pacified by the glorious gift
of faith that we might be caused to have our eyes Fixed on the
Lord Jesus Christ that we might look and see how glorious He
is right now, that we might be in awe of the fact that right
now as we speak, He's in heaven interceding for us, this great
Comforter. Let's read from verse 15. If
you love God, me, keep my commandments. If you love me, the commandments
of me you shall keep." It's a glorious declaration of the eternal covenant
in love, the eternal covenant in grace and mercy and peace.
And verse 16 begins with an incredibly important word. And. And. And. Love and the obedience that Christ
works in the hearts of his people by grace causes this to be the
next thing that he says. And I will pray the Father and
he shall give you another comforter. that he may abide with you forever,
even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because
it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye know him, for he
dwelleth with you and shall be in you. What a lovely description of
the Great Comforter. He comforts his people by telling
them the truth. He is the truth. The Lord Jesus
Christ says he is the way, the truth and the life. He says,
I will not leave you comfortless. I will not leave you as orphans
is what that means. I will not leave you as those
who are without parents, without care and protection. I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world
seeth me no more. But ye see me, because I live,
ye also shall live. Twice the Lord Jesus Christ has
made a distinction between his work in the lives of his people
and the world. And it's good to remember that
on that resurrection day and for the next 40 days, the Lord
Jesus Christ never visited any except his children. Never. He had the most extraordinary
opportunity to march down to Pilate's palace. and declare
what a hypocritical scoundrel Pilate had been. He had an amazing
opportunity to walk down to Caiaphas's palace and declare those religious
legalists to be the hypocrites that they were, that what they
thought was love of God was hatred of God, and yet he didn't visit
them. The essence of my message this
morning is how precious it is for the Holy Spirit to come.
How precious it is, how absolutely and utterly dependent we are
on God revealing Himself to us by His Spirit and through His
Word. Verse 19, let's read it again.
Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see
me, because I live, ye shall live also. What a glorious promise
of our Saviour. In that day ye shall know that
I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. There's a day called the Day
of the Time of Love and the Day of Grace and the Day of Revelation. What a remarkable thing to know. What a remarkable thing for God
to reveal. You shall know is the promise
of our risen Saviour. you shall know every child of
God shall know that the Lord Jesus Christ is in his father
is one with his father and you in him and I I'm so thankful that our God
says to believe and to rejoice, because you try and explain that
by anything other than the glorious eyes of faith that he gives his
people. He that hath my commandments
and keepeth them is he that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall
be loved of my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself
to him. Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot,
Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and
not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto
him, this is how he manifests himself, if any man love me,
he will keep, he will guard, he will hold onto, he will protect,
He will embrace my words and my Father will love him and we
will come unto him and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth
not my sayings, and the word which ye hear is not mine, but
the Father's which sent me. These things have I spoken unto
you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the
Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach
you all things. and bring all things to your
remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave
with you, my peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give
I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid. You have heard now, I said unto
you, I go away and come again unto you, if you you would rejoice, because I
said, I go unto the Father, for my Father is greater than I. The more I've studied this passage
of scripture, the more I've scribbled over my notes of it, the more
amazing it has become. It's one of the most delightful
passages in all the scriptures, isn't it? It's just amazing. It's amazing just in those 13
verses, eight times the word love is mentioned. Is love for
us? and our love for Him. Our love for Him. 1 Corinthians ends
by saying, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, Let him
be anathema, cursed of God. Maranatha, the Lord is coming. I don't wish for that to be the
case for any of us. But here is this glorious picture,
isn't it? Faith works by love, Galatians
5, 6. How does faith work? By love. Faith works by love. And here
in John 14 we have in this section of scripture which begins with
words of comfort and then reveals the comforter himself and reveals
the glory of that comfort. I wanted to talk later on this
morning. I just want to talk about the
Comforter. The Comforter's love. The Comforter bringing the love
of the Father. But in this short passage of
scripture we have the price of love in John Chapter 14. He says,
I go, I go, I go. He goes to the cross. That same
night he will be betrayed. That next morning he'll be hung
on Calvary Street. There is a price for his love. And we have the truth of love. And we have the obedience of
love. And we have the presence Christ who is love in you. We have the words of love. If any man loved me, he will
keep my words. We have the rejoicing of love. If you loved me, you'd be rejoicing.
And we have the glorious fellowship of love. The fellowship of love. I'm coming back. I'm coming back. And I'm going to come back, and
when I come back, I'm going to declare the glory of my finished
work and the glory of how it is that you who are nothing but
sin and have done nothing but sin can live in the presence
of God Almighty, not because of your doing, but gloriously
because of his doing. We're going to sing again. Thank
you, Norm. Number 54. Low in the grave he
lay, Jesus my Saviour, waiting for the coming day, Jesus my
Lord. Thank you. Jesus, my Savior! is Jesus, my Lord morning that was years ago. Imagine what it was like when
he first awoke in that tomb and life came back into that body. No wonder the angels of heaven
came to declare. The word angel means messenger,
and we're here to declare the message of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We're here to declare the glory of who he is. And we are here
gathered, I trust, by God Almighty. There are some serious questions
that this passage of scripture asks us because, like all of
the scriptures, it makes a distinction between the children of God and
the world. Right from the very beginning
there is always going to be a distinction between Cain and Abel. And if
you go to the Great White Judgment Throne there is a distinction
made. In Matthew Chapter 25 you can
read about it. Always there is a distinction,
there is a division, and the division is because of him. And
the question that should be on our minds and the question that
should be our prayer is, have I received the Holy Spirit? And the scriptures show us how
clearly that is in the lives of the children of God. Have
I received the Holy Spirit? Is God's Spirit here today? How vital it is to have the Spirit
of God. How vital it is. James says without
the Spirit the body is dead. You are spiritually dead until
the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ comes. So let's just
go back to John Chapter 14 and we'll look at these verses and
I trust we'll have opportunity to go and answer those questions.
Because in a subject that is so critical to your eternal soul's
well-being and so critical to the glory of God, God leaves
us in no doubt. From His Word He makes it very
clear. So let's go back to John chapter
14 and verse 16. And as I said earlier, there's
a great conjunction there, isn't it? If you love me, keep my commandments. And I love that the commandments
that he's just brought to us are, ask, ask, ask him. Aren't they? They're the commandments,
aren't they? If you ask anything in my name,
I'll do it. And you have received, you'll
never stop asking. You will never stop asking. You'll never stop asking for
yourself and you'll never stop asking for those you love. You
ask anything in my name and I will do it. Ask it in my name. That, verse 13, that the Father
may be glorified. There is absolutely no point
asking something from God that is not in line with the name,
the very character of God Almighty, and something that doesn't glorify
God the Father. And how's the Father glorified?
He's glorified in the Son. He's glorified in the Son's work. His dear, precious, darling Son. He says, and. I want us to see that the coming
of the Holy Spirit, the sending of the Holy Spirit, is linked
to the love of God reciprocated as the promises of God become
living realities, spiritual realities and physical realities in the
lives of His disciples. We have a living faith because
we have a living Savior. He says, and as a result of that,
I will pray the Father. I will pray the Father. We ask,
we're mercy beggars at the footstool of our great God. The Lord Jesus,
when he asks a father, it's a different word altogether, he makes a request
as an equal and he makes a request on behalf of all of his select,
all of those who are in union with him. but it reveals the
lovely humility of the Son and a lovely union of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We have a passage of scripture
here that makes it so abundantly clear that there is a Trinity.
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are all God. And they are distinct persons,
but they are one in essence as God Almighty. They are one in
will and purpose. They are one in power. They are one in this covenant
of grace. The Father is revealed as the
one who reveals his electing love. The Father, before time
began, gave a particular people that we're reading about here.
He gave them into the hands of his Son. And we have in the Son,
we have this redeeming love. In this covenant of grace, this
covenant of love, the covenant of blood, the covenant that caused
there to be a union, a real and vital union between all of the
elect of God and the Lord Jesus Christ as members of his body
from before the foundation of the world. And all of that is
hidden. How could the world ever know
about the fact that God is Trinity? You could get the brightest minds
together and let them spend the rest of eternity. I've never
come up with the notion that God is Trinity. It requires the
regenerating, life-giving work of God the Holy Spirit to reveal
these things. We are utterly dependent upon
the Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, to come and reveal to us the
truth of who God is, the truth of who we are as fallen in Adam,
the truth of what the scriptures declare. The commandments of
God, in a sense, are all of the Scriptures, everything that He
says. And we have in this glorious covenant the most wonderful promises. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
covenant, and the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father and
God the Holy Spirit exercise power in the lives of the children
of God to make them know what they are, sinners. to make them know what they need,
a saviour, and to bring them into the arms of that saviour.
God is not just someone who wound up this universe and set things
ticking away. God works all things for the
good. And he says in that covenant,
he says, I will be their God and they
shall be my people. I will come, as he keeps saying
here in these verses, I'll come and I'm going to make my abode
with them. How can an infinitely holy God
live and make his abode with someone as wretched as I am and
as wretched as you are? How? There is only one solution to
the problem. You have to be made as holy as
God is holy. forever, completely and perfectly. And that's what the Comforter
does. The Comforter comes to us and reveals what God the Father
and God the Son and He is doing. I love what Psalm 110 verse 3,
thy people shall be willing in the day of my power. They'll be volunteers. There
are no mercenaries in the great army of our Lord. They're all
volunteers. They're all willing. Faith, as
I keep saying, worketh by love, and love and obedience are friends. If you love me, the commands
of me you'll keep, the commands in all the scripture. We love
to think of how much The Word of God is so extraordinarily
comprehensive about all of life. God's children love the Law of
Moses, and they love the Law of Christ. And we love it particularly
because we see that law which governs everything you do. While
you're asleep, the law has commands and demands over you. As you
get out of bed, the law speaks to you. As you do everything
every day, every hour, every second of every day, the law
has something to say about what you are doing and where you are
and who you're associating with and the pots. and kettles that
you use, and the state of the walls of your house, and the
things that you eat, and then when you go to bed it still demands. I just love the fact that it's
so comprehensive, that it touches all of life. And I love the fact
that that law in the hands of my Saviour is magnified. See, people who want to get other
people to live under the law have two very, very huge problems. They have no notion whatsoever
of the holiness of God, and they have absolutely no notion whatsoever
of how sinful they are. They have very, very serious
problems, my friends. They're very serious problems
and so serious are they that they'll only ever be remedied
by God coming into the hearts of His people and revealing what
they are and who our glorious Saviour is. You need a life from
God. How vital is the Holy Spirit?
You need a life from God to know that you need life from God.
You need life from God to know that your obedience, your supposed
obedience to his commands, is nothing but filthy rags. God
says it must be perfect to be accepted. Have you got some perfect
obedience? That's why we have a glorious,
glorious Saviour and He's declared to be a Comforter. I will pray. I love the humility
of the Lord Jesus Christ and I love the glory of this union. I love the glory of the interaction
between God the Father and God the Son and God the Father and
God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. I love the fact that
God's children are included in it. I will pray the Father and
he shall. Don't you love the prayers of
the Lord Jesus Christ? Don't you love it? Don't you
love that this was his request as he was going to Calvary? This
was his request. He shall, He shall give you another
comforter. Don't you love that word, give?
He won't give you another comforter as a reward of your doing, He'll
give you another comforter as a reward of His doing. All of
our blessings, all of our spiritual blessings, we're blessed with
all of them in the Beloved. We're accepted in the Beloved. I'll give you another comforter.
In John 15.26 he speaks of this comforter being given again.
And when the comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from
the Father. There's a glorious union in these
passages of Scripture of the relationship between God the
Father, God the Son and God the Spirit. Even the Spirit of truth
which proceedeth from the Father, and what does the Spirit do?
John 15, 26, He shall testify of me. When does the Spirit come?
Not when the Spirit's talking about Himself and not when fancy
things are happening. When the Lord Jesus Christ is
glorified. He shall give you another comforter.
That word another means one like me. One to take my place, one to
do my work, a person as I am. A person is coming. because of my prayers and because
of my love issuing in obedience. Grace upon grace and faith from
faith to faith. The father responds to the father's
request in prayer. The son obeys the father in all
that he does and says the comfort that comes as the father gives
him in response to the son's asking. See, obedience and submission not diminish their deity or their
honour or their glory at all. Only in Adam's fallen children
When we live out the lie that we were told by Satan in the
garden, you shall be as gods. Only Adam's fallen children see
obedience and submission as repulsive until such time as God births
us anew. How vital is the Holy Spirit?
God's children love to love the Lord Jesus Christ. They love
the union and the fellowship they have with him, and they
hate the things in themselves and around them that break that
fellowship. That break, that sweet, sweet
comfort of our Saviour coming, and we love the fact that He
keeps coming. He keeps coming not because of our obedience,
but He keeps coming to reveal to us who He is. Love compels us. 2 Corinthians 5. Love, Christ's
love for us, And I remember, I think I told
you a couple of weeks ago, that is like having a cattle or an
animal in a crush where they are funneled in and there are
barriers. Don't you love the fact that
God has set barriers to our wickedness and to our rebellion? And he
says, as he says to all of his children throughout time, this
far you shall go and I'll hedge your way in. Even Harlot, like
Gomer, was told by God that her way will be hedged with thorns. Another comforter. What a glorious
description. It's only used four times in
the scriptures, this word, and it means, and it's translated
advocate, and it's the word that the Lord Jesus Christ describes
to himself in 1 John. Chapter two, verse one, but it
means someone who is called to one side in order to help. I love that. I just love that description
of him. The Lord Jesus Christ has been the comforter of his
people for three and a half years. For three and a half years in
the storms of life, the physical storms on the Sea of Galilee,
the storms in the face of enemies, the storms in the face of their
sin and their weakness in faith. The storms that come, the enemies
that come in the fact that the law's demands needed to be fulfilled
and they couldn't fulfill them. The storms that were gonna come
that night when they were gonna be revealed as hypocrites in
their words and cowards in their actions. All of them. Do you need a comforter? do you
need a comforter? Every single time when the Lord
Jesus Christ his disciples met an enemy the Lord Jesus always I love what happened in the garden
when that crowd of soldiers came and the Lord Jesus went out and
said, Whom seek ye this evening? And they answered him, Jesus
of Nazareth. And Jesus saith unto them, I
am. I am God Almighty, is what he
is saying to them. And Judas also, which betrayed
him, stood with them. And soon then, as he had said
unto them, I am, they went backwards and fell to the ground. And then
he asked them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, no doubt trembling
in their words, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you
that I am. Therefore, if you seek me, You let them go free. That... The saying might be fulfilled
which he spake of them which thou hast given me, I have lost
none. It's another comforter. He has
comforted them and now there's another comforter and it's exactly
the same comforter. Isn't it extraordinary and wonderful
in the scriptures how when he talks about the comforter coming
he talks about the Holy Spirit and then he talks about himself
and then he talks about himself in union with the Father and
then he talks about himself in union with the Holy Spirit and
you wonder who is he talking about? He's talking about our
God in Trinity. Turn with me to Romans chapter
8 for a minute, please. I just love how it's pictured
here by the Blessed Holy Spirit. And it speaks of how fundamentally
vital it is for your eternal soul that the Holy Spirit has
come. And if he hasn't come, that you
might be found bowing and begging for him to come. Chapter 8 verse 1, There is therefore
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law
of sin and death. We're free from the law, brothers
and sisters. We are free. For what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending
his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned
sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be partially fulfilled in us if
we add our obedience to it. What's it say? What does God
say? Fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after
the Spirit. For they that are of the flesh,
those that are after the flesh, those who are looking at fleshly
activities and fleshly things that they and other people do
and their fleshly obedience, They that are after the flesh
do mind the things of the flesh, and they that are after the Spirit
do the things of the Spirit. What does the Spirit do? He testifies
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's read on. For to be carnally
minded is death, spiritual death, eternal death. But to be spiritually
minded is life and peace, because the carnal mind is enmity against
God. People say that I love Jesus. You'll only love Jesus, truly
love the Lord Jesus Christ, when you have been made to see that
your carnal mind is enmity against Him. You must have a new birth. Because the carnal mind is enmity
against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be, so that they that are in the flesh cannot please God. You cannot please God by your
fleshly activities, but you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit,
if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man
have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his, and if Christ
be in him, is dead, you've been crucified
with Christ. The body is dead because of sin,
but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in
you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken. Give life to your mortal bodies
by His Spirit. How do you get life? God the Spirit must birth you
again. The flesh profiteth nothing. Spirit gives life to spirit. How vital, how vital it is for
this one to come as a comforter. He's going away, our Lord Jesus,
but this comforter shall never go away, that he may abide with
you forever. The comforter in heaven. to go back to while you're there
in Romans chapter eight, look at what the comforter is doing.
It says in verse 27, he that searches the heart knoweth what
is the mind of the spirit, because he maketh intercession for the
saints according to the will of God. And go over and we'll
see that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, pleads
for us in heaven as well. Verse 34. For who is he that
condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea,
rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand
of God, who also maketh intercession. Right now, God the Son is making
intercession for all of all the time. The comforter in heaven
is pleading the case of all of his children with God. And the
comforter here pleads God's case with them and never leaves them. That's what we need, aren't we?
The comforter comes and says to us, what? It is finished. The Comforter comes and says
it is all done. The Comforter comes and says
the Lord Jesus Christ has put away your sins forever. The Comforter
comes and tells you that it's all been done. That's why he's
called the Spirit of Truth. The truth of who God is, the
truth of who we are, the truth of how God saves at the cross,
the truth of how God The truth of the new birth by
which we see all these things. Have I received God's Holy Spirit? Ask, he says. Ask. Be a mercy beggar. Be a mercy
beggar at the throne of our glorious God and King. May the Lord add
his blessing to those words.