This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Let's turn to the Gospel of John
chapter 7. Specifically verses 38 and 39
is where we'll be this morning. This is part of the task of preaching
that can become tedious in several ways on top of how
they're tedious to begin with. And that is to take what is said
here in the mouth of Jesus, out of the mouth of Jesus, written
by the evangelist John, the apostle, and not teach what Scripture
is not trying to say, but at the same time also helping us
understand that contextually in this particular sentence,
there's not a whole lot of doctrine that's expounded upon. Doctrine
is there, but it's not necessarily expounded upon. And then you
come to the historical issues that this text holds. As we get
into the latter parts of John 7 and the first parts of John
8, you'll notice that I will not preach some of the passages.
I won't teach them at all because they're not reliably in the original
manuscripts according to our tradition, historically, understanding. This particular verse, these
particular two verses have had much controversy over the last
few hundred years. And that, what is Jesus saying? Is Jesus speaking or is John
speaking? Is this a narrative or is this
a recollection of what Jesus is teaching? Is Jesus talking
about the hearts of those who drink? Is He talking about His
heart? or a stomach, as some of you, stomach, heart, the center
of the soul of man. It used to be the bowels, now
it's the heart, because that seems better, right? Still a
little morbid. But in the end, pastorally, the
Bible teaches us exactly in the context that it's supposed to
teach us. We do not have to wonder and be consumed by, is this the
eighth day? Is this the seventh day of the
feast? We know the context in which
Jesus is saying these things is with this temple of booths
when the water was poured every day for seven days. Jesus confesses
himself, proclaims himself, declares himself the living water, and
he calls out to all of these people here, and says, if anyone
thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Verse 38 and 39, whoever
believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will
flow rivers of living water. Now this He said about the Spirit,
whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as yet the
Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
There's a lot there. Because in that particular proclamation
of the gospel by Jesus, we have a lot of things that are taking
place in this narrative that we've already been taught by
this narrative. We've already been taught by Jesus in John
3 that the Spirit is that one who brings life to the dead,
to the unregenerate, make them born anew, or from above, or
as we like to say in our terms, born again. The Spirit is at
work there, and only the Spirit is at work there in that sense
that no man can be birthed anew of his own desire, but it must
be as the Spirit wishes through the teaching of the Gospel, the
Word of God, who has become flesh and dwelt among us and proclaims
these things. The narrative goes on to show
us with the woman at Sychar, whereas Nicodemus, representative
of the teacher of all Israel, if we can, to quote Jesus, comes
to an impasse in his cognitive ability to comprehend that which
Jesus is telling him. So Jesus expressly helps him
understand it by teaching him of Moses, and teaching him of
the serpent being raised in the wilderness, which is the gospel
sufficient unto eternal life. If someone comes to you and they
teach you out of Deuteronomy, and they show you that Moses
lifted the serpent into the wilderness, and that those who looked upon
the work of God and believed would live, it is identical to
the reality of the Gospel of Christ, and in the hearing of
that teaching in Deuteronomy, you can be born again by the
Spirit of God as He wishes. The Spirit, this teaching, continues. In John chapter 4, where Jesus
has just been sort of rebuked and scoffed and mocked in Jerusalem. They sort of shoot Him out of
the temple with this idea, He's an idiot, He's a fool, He's crazy.
How does He think He can rebuild the temple in three days when
it's not yet complete? It wasn't yet complete and it
had been 48 years that they had been building on it. It's taken
us 48 years to get where we are, and this man thinks he can rebuild
it in three days. Of course, the Scripture teaches
us that he's speaking of his body. And as his own people remember
the narrative, as it starts in the prologue of John's Gospel,
that he came to his own and his own did not receive him, acknowledge
him, see him. But to those who did believe
on His name, those are the ones who see and acknowledge and receive.
Believing is the only thing that that's referring to. He gave
the right to become the children of God, not because of the will
of man, nor the will of the mind, nor the will of the flesh, nor
of the blood, but by the will of God. This is by the Holy Spirit
alone. So in John 4, we see Jesus going
out of the, quote, chosen people of Israel, going to the Gentiles,
and more than that, going to the worst section of Gentiles,
whereby He would evangelize Samaritans who had taken Judaism, twisted
it around, made a copy of it, and worshipped wrongly. so that
when they were the unclean of the unclean, so much so that
a very devout Jew, when seeing someone who was Samaritan, would
cross the street and go the other direction, out of their way,
before they would stand on the same side of the road. They were
called dogs and heathen. They were known as, from the
Jews' point of view, as the world, filthy and wretched. Jesus looks at this woman and
asks her for something to drink. You know the narrative. And He
says there, and I sort of looked back at this last week, but to
get us in the right frame of mind, keep this in mind, because
Jesus is continuing to teach here in this section of Scripture
all that which He's already taught us thus far. How is it that you, a Jew, would
ask of Me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink. If you knew who
was asking you, you would ask Him and He would give you living
water. How? You have no bucket. And
we know that the narrative continues there. He says that the people
who drink of this water here in this well, they thirst again,
but the people who drink of the water that I give never thirst
nor hunger ever again. They are completely satisfied.
They have no longings in this life like your longings. Samaritan
Woman from Sychar. They will never be satisfied,
but in this water I will show satisfaction. It will well up
to eternal life. It will continually and forever
be for your joy. And then in John 5, Jesus says
to the Pharisees that the Son of God does not speak of His
own accord, nor does He work of His own accord, but He comes
doing that which the Father is doing, now He does. That which
the Father is saying, now He says. and that all will hear
the voice of the Son of God when He calls all those who are in
the graves to be raised alive, some unto everlasting righteousness
and glory and life and some unto everlasting judgment." In John
6, He declares Himself the bread of life. In John 7, He now is
this living water. John 8, He will say He is the
light of the world. The prophet Isaiah, God speaking
through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 44, says, "...for I will
pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground.
I will pour My Spirit upon your offspring and My blessings on
your descendants." Church, I say this over and over
and over again because it is the example of the practical
application of the teaching of John's Gospel. We live in a day. Y'all listen to what I'm saying.
Children, pay attention to what I'm saying. We live in a day
where many people claim to be in Christ, but few are. Many
people are religious in their, quote, ministry, but few are
born again by the Spirit. Many will even come to the place
of saying that they have the only true gospel when it is not
the one that is taught in Scripture. Many will say, well, I love Jesus,
but they will not be able to identify the Christ that we have
been learning over the last 62 weeks. We are not a Christian nation.
The Church of Jesus Christ is not a dominant presence in the
United States of America. It never has been and it never
will be. And some people would say, and
we know that because of how they live. We know that because of what
they teach, despite how they live. Because there are a lot
of good cults that live really good lives. LDS, we can't touch
them. Every dollar they make, half
of it goes to somebody else. Every free hour they have, 40
minutes of it goes to serve somebody else. And they think they're
right with God because some man named Smith found some magic
plates and put them in a magic hat, got a magic word from some
magic God. His name is Satan. Lucifer, actually. He's the enemy of God. We know who are the children
of God because of the gospel that they proclaim. And even
when we find our brothers and sisters in Christ failing and
falling and some of them even being snared by the flesh and
tempted and falling into sin, through the correction, the discipline
of the church, the prayers of the saints, by the grace and
the mercy of God the Holy Spirit, we will see them come and persevere
in the end. But in our world, beloved, there's
a lot of religion, which we do have some of our own. It's not
bad to be disciplined and practice certain things. But there's a
lot of religion. There's a lot of false Christianity.
There's a lot of things that are very much not okay in the
context of Christianity in our culture. And I would say that
it is the majority of what we see. And some people would say, well,
it's because the Holy Spirit is not evident. I would agree
with that. The Holy Spirit is not evident
in the teaching because it's not the truth. The Holy Spirit
is not evident in the affection because it's not sacrificial.
The Holy Spirit is not evident in the unity because it's not
in Christ. But Jesus teaches continually
throughout this narrative all the way to the end and other
places that the apostles will affirm these things. That the
Spirit, Holy Spirit, Jesus is the Son, God the Father is the
Father, God the Holy Spirit is the Spirit. These are the three
persons of our one God. We are Trinitarian historically,
we are Trinitarian theologically, but friends, we are Trinitarian
because it is what is revealed to us in the Gospel of Grace. There is no work of the Father,
apart from the Son, apart from the Spirit, that is not necessary,
working together as God to redeem His people. And yes, as Baptists,
historically and even presently, we seem to forget about God,
the Holy Spirit. We seem to be scared to talk
about the Holy Spirit. We seem to be afraid to teach
and learn what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit because
in our culture, many people have decided that the way that the
Holy Spirit is to be seen and understood is some mystical thing,
some mystical experience that the Bible doesn't prescribe.
So much so that people will actually say, and you can't argue with
it, but what do you do when the Spirit told me? If I tell you that God the Holy
Spirit told me something, you can tell whether or not I'm lying,
or delusional, or sinister, or just dumb as a bag of rocks,
by going to the Word of God and seeing that what I say is there. Friends, the point of this teaching
in John 5, 6, 7, 4 is to show that the most devout,
listen to me, the most devout religious biblical scholars,
theologians, and teachers of the day of the first century
were all as lost as a ball in high weeds and a goat in the
wilderness. And there was nothing they could do to be found. Nothing. There was nothing they could
do to be right with God. There was nothing in all of their
centuries and of millennia of wisdom of the teaching of God's
Word itself that could cause them to be born again to a living
hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
except that they are granted repentance and gifted faith by
the work of God the Holy Spirit alone. And the outcome of that is that
when we look at it and we see what God has done for us and
what God has effectuated for us and what God has accomplished
for us, how God has justified us and sanctified us and will
absolutely glorify us through the perfect example of Jesus
Christ and His glorification, we know that we are not alone
in this venture and as a matter of fact, what we'll see before
I'm through today is that we're not even at work in this venture.
Now, people across the world, oh, Tippins, you're talking about
the Spirit doing everything. Monogistically, God does it all. So that when I freely believe
on Christ, every moment of my breath, every day when my conscious
mind reaffirms and asserts that Christ and His finished work
on the cross is the only hope that I have for eternal life,
and that not only is it my hope, but it is my guarantee, That
is a work of God, even though I freely believe it. Because that's what the Bible
teaches us. Friends, our evangelism, of course,
should go to the new tribes. We're commanded. But let's make sure that our
evangelism is teaching them the true Jesus and not just trying
to make them a contemporary culture of moral clothed people. It's not Christian to tell tribes
to put on clothes. That's as legalistic as it comes.
But let's also make sure that we recognize that it's not just
the new tribes, and it's not just the wicked that are living
out there in blatant sin. It's not just the atheists down
the street who say, I don't believe there's a God. It's not just
the cults like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormonism and Judaism and
Islam. It's those who say they're our
brothers, those who say they're our sisters, those of our own
household, those of our own bloodline, those of our own lineage. Oh yeah, I believe. What do you
believe? In whom do you believe? Well,
you know, I, uh, I, uh. Have you ever been there? Yes. You don't have to be a scholar
to confess the Gospel, but you must have heard the Gospel in
order for God to save you through the Spirit. To believe on Christ
is a work of God by the Spirit of God. Jesus has just said,
a few verses before, that the words that I say to you are Spirit
and life. You must be born of the Spirit,
for that which is flesh is flesh, and that which is spirit is spirit.
Man's flesh cannot birth himself spiritually, for it is not spiritually
discerned." But beloved, as our men spoke yesterday morning,
and as some other brothers that I've spoken with throughout the
week, there are some people who believe that anyone who can regurgitate
the authentic gospel with their mouth are believers. But beloved,
I can write down When I write down, I can't write it down,
I can read an article on neurosurgery and become so well acquainted
with that that you would imagine that I was a surgeon. And even
in the coffee room at the hospital, I could get so well versed in
the language of these publications that other surgeons may very
well even collaborate with me. So there are a lot of people
who can say they know the gospel, but they're not born again. You must believe in Christ. Your trust must be in Jesus and
all He is and all He's done with nothing else on the side to carry
you into the well maybe. Just in case. There's no just
in case. There's no contingency to salvation. There's no, well, I'll trust
in this, but just in case. I'll pierce my left eyelid because
I was told one time that that honors God. How horrible. Somebody will do that now. There's no just in case. There is, it is finished. Christ
has finished the work of redemption. He has made righteous the declaration
of God to justify His people. He has made perfect the elect
of God through His death. And those who believe by faith
are His. And those who are His will believe by faith. This Holy Spirit teaching is so frustrating to us in our
culture because it is so ignored and then so expanded in such
ways it's not biblical. Whoever believes in Me, Jesus
says, as Scripture says, verse 38, out of his heart will flow
rivers of living water. Now this He said about the Spirit,
whom those who believed in Him were to receive, for as of yet
Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
I will reiterate this a thousand more times before we get through
with John's Gospel. Three more years. Whoever believes, whoever is
believing, has eternal life. I'll remind you of the teaching
of John 3. in the fullness of the narrative of Jesus there,
He doesn't just say sixteen. As a matter of fact, sixteen
starts with the word for. This is true for God loved the
world in this way, that He gave the only Son that He had, that
those who are believing in Him presently have eternal life. whoever, whosoever, those who
are believing. That's what the Word means. This
is not a blanket, general, universal call to salvation. This isn't
a doctrine to teach us that anybody, anywhere, in any fashion can
believe anytime they good and well want to. People hate that. People very close and dear to
me hate that. Friends, you can't hate that. And when we learn, we grow to
understand the truth of the Scripture. We cannot hate the reality that
the Bible says that not all can come to faith. This work of the Holy Spirit
is the work of salvation whereby it applies to the believer. whereby
when one believes, he has been born of God before he comes to
faith. Faith is not the effectual point
whereby you are made alive. Faith is the evidence of your
aliveness. Believing on Christ, of course,
is salvation, but it comes because you have been made alive in Christ. Friends, this is something that
cannot be negotiated. Because let me tell you what
it is and what you'll see before I'm through today. To deny that the new birth comes before
faith is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. It is to put God the Holy Spirit
as the responder to the will of man. It is to put God the
Holy Spirit as the One who comes at the will of man and the wishes
of man. When the Bible teaches very clearly
that is not the case. God does what He pleases, as
He pleases, with whom He pleases, and everything He does as He
pleases is righteous. If God creates a living life
for the purpose of being patient with that person for a hundred
years on earth, that at the end of days He crushes that person
in His judicial vengeance, He is right in doing so, and that
is more than fair. It's superlatively glorious. And if we understood this and
we understand this, we understand that the reason this does not
offend us is because God the Holy Spirit has brought us a
new mind so that we can see and see it and believe in this and
then we rejoice in it to the praise of its glorious grace. Come to me and drink. Drinking
is believing. I had a conversation two weeks
ago with someone that says, well, you know, that thirst, if we're
thirsty, we're lost. No, we're not. Brothers and sisters,
I said last week, I gave a sort of a vision of what first century
Judaism looked like and how these people thirsted at this feast
for spiritual things and for worldly things and for physical
things. Friends, when we thirst for Christ,
it's because we've been born again. And it's the ultimate
dichotomy. It's the ultimate irony. It's
the ultimate oxymoron, whichever one of those three really works,
that says, I'm thirsty, but I'm not thirsty. I want something
to drink, but I've got more than I can take. I want more, but
I can't fill any more in, so I'm going to take it all in anyway.
This is the imagery of what the Bible teaches, of what Jesus
is teaching about the work of the Holy Spirit and the life
of the elect of God and His work in regenerating them and bringing
them to faith and bringing them to salvation. Have you ever been
so frustrated with a person or persons that never seem to get
the gospel? And they say, well, yeah, I believe
in Jesus, and they never really see salvation. They never really
have faith. They're constantly in and out
of understanding and belief. And what are we told to do in
our culture? We're told to get them into a
pattern of discipline, which is not a bad thing to be disciplined. And we use the term backslide,
backslidden. Friends, you know another word
for backslidden? Unbeliever. If I am born of God, backsliding
would mean that I'm not born of God. Now I know it's all semantics. Some of you may say, well, you
know, sometimes we do sin. Sometimes we do sin. But it does
not affect our standing with our Father. Because we are sealed
by God the Holy Spirit. And He will correct us. He will
make us miserable along the way. He will discipline us because
He loves us. He will bring us to a place of
joy. And for some of us, it's really quickly. And for some
of us, more of us, it's like, I'd rather hit that wall full
speed than turn around right now. I know there's a good meal
over here, but I'll eat the grout between the bricks because I'm
just that stubborn. But sometimes we do better in
trying to get people to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel
to just teach them that gospel. And pray that God would do His
will in their lives and the full effect of the Holy Spirit's regenerative
power by the will of God would work in them to bring them to
life and then they would become thirsty for Jesus. And even we who thirst for Christ,
and we who in the same way synonymously thirst for righteousness, because
Jesus is the righteousness of God. Sometimes we get a hankering
for something else to sip on, but it never satisfies us. Believing is drinking. Those
who drink, or those who believe, those who believe, according
to this text, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Out of the believer's heart will
flow rivers of living water. This is really the only thing
I'm going to teach today. And in order to do it, I had
probably three hours worth of things to say, so I'm going to
have to truncate it. By the Lord's grace, the second
or third week of May next year, we're going to have our first
conference as a church, and it's going to be on the work and the
person of the Holy Spirit. And we're going to have times
where we get together, and you can invite your believing friends
to come if you want, and then we're going to have, possibly,
either on a Monday night or a Sunday afternoon, a time where we might
invite other people. Pray about that. Lord willing, we'll see it happen.
But those who are believing have the Holy Spirit. This is the
flowing of the water, the symbolism of the Spirit of God, of the
presence of God, of the fullness of God, of the effects of God,
of the nature of God, of the refreshment of God, of all of
these things. God the Holy Spirit is the one
who acts to bring people to life. He is the one who does the work
as He wishes of saving. on the merits of the one who
is the Savior, who is Jesus Christ the Righteous. God, the Holy Spirit, can rebirth
a wicked sinner who is guilty of sinning before God, but because
God is satisfied with His judgment against them, because Jesus took
our penalty, the Holy Spirit is just and regenerating that
person for whom Christ died. See how it works together? God declares them righteous.
He affects that justice at the cross of Christ. He satisfies
His wrath and He raises Christ from the dead, thus saving His
elect people righteously. God would not be righteous just
saying, you're forgiven. You understand that, right? And then this God, the Holy Spirit,
as we learn, does the work of salvation, regeneration, sealing,
protecting. Let's look at what the Holy Spirit,
let's look at what He does briefly. First of all, we have the Spirit.
And how do you know He's talking about the Spirit? Because verse
39 tells me He's talking about the Spirit. In John 3, we see that it is
the work of the Spirit to live. I've already said enough about
that today. John 14, we see the sinning of the Spirit. John 7,
the Word of God is life, and that life is the Spirit of God.
The words that I teach to you are spirit and life. But what
does it mean to have this spring of living water flowing? What does it mean for the water
to well up to eternal life? What is being said here? Well, I think the first and foremost
thing we need to understand is that the giving of the Spirit
as our clothes is a guarantee for us. We get the Holy Spirit. We get God, the Holy Spirit,
in us. And the Spirit is God, and the Son is God, and the Father
is God, so God is in us. He resides in us. He fills us.
He works in us. He does work in us. He works
through us. God does it all. This spring
of life. I want to do something I haven't
done in a while, but I just want us to think about Paul's life
for a second. Think about what the Apostle
Paul says many times over. We've gone through a lot of his
epistles over the last few years, and we've seen some things that
he says. He says, in the midst of his imprisonment, without
any money, and without any food, when the church of Philippi said,
I will send you some money, he says, no, I've had much and I've
had little, and I prefer little, because in my lacking, Christ
is my everything. Now how does a man who has nothing,
when he's offered something, say, I have everything? Think of that for a second. How
he can say that is because he does have everything, for he's
filled with the fullness of God. Ephesians 3, Paul even prays
for the church of Ephesus there, where Timothy was like the chief
elder, and he says, I pray that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God. And the outcome of being filled
with all the fullness of God is that you're in a whirlwind
of sufficient glorious praise, and you understand with all the
other saints the breadth, and the depth, and the height, and
the fullness, and the power, and the glory of the love of
God He has for you in Christ Jesus. Oh, glory, hallelujah! This is how Paul was able to
say what he said in the midst of the darkest hours of his physical
life, that there is nothing that could shake the water of the
filling of God out of his soul. And the outcome of that was not
a work of miracles. He didn't float in the sky and
lightning bolts shoot out of his eyes. He didn't do all sorts
of magic tricks. He rejoiced. over and over and
over again while he proclaimed the excellencies of the mercies
of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Continuing to concern
himself with the evangelism of the lost, of the lost sheep,
and the effectual discipleship of the church, he never put stock
in the sense of his suffering in the flesh. Ever! That's flowing living water. That's what it looks like. Paul tells the church of Ephesus
what it really is supposed to be called, to the praise of His
glorious grace. You see that, beloved? That's
what it is. But in our day, we'd rather fuss
and moan and bicker and complain and fight and divide over things
that may be important, thinking that we are the arbiter of the
rule, of the measure, of the canon, of the Word of God, rather
than just proclaim God, His Son, and the work of God, the Holy
Spirit. And beloved, The spring of life of the Holy
Spirit in us produces that in spite of us. It was able to say,
and I'm not saying Paul wouldn't complain, Paul confessed the
sin of covetousness. So he had a complaint in his
heart, didn't he? And Paul prayed three different
times, he says, and when I think Paul prayed, it's not like we
would pray, oh Lord, just take this pain away. Good gracious.
Oh, Lord, my head's killing me. Oh, man, I wish you'd give me
my eyesight back, or I wish you'd make my leg healed again. I mean,
I think Paul prayed. I think Paul, when he says, I
prayed three times, I think that brother took a month or so and
just labored over that. Now, I may be wrong, but I think
when Paul makes a count of the prayers that he had, I think
Paul prayed. And I think Paul prayed that
God would deliver him from whatever the thorn he had in his flesh.
I heard a joke one time that it was a wife. It's not true. But it was a joke. And none of
the women are laughing, they're all gone. Yeah, appreciate it, y'all are
all in trouble now. All the men laughed, all the women frowned.
I need a camera up here so y'all can see y'all's faces. Paul's prayer, I lost my train
of thought. So Paul is praying And the Holy Spirit of God speaks
to Paul and says, my grace is enough. You don't need healing. You're full of all that I have
to offer. Every spiritual blessing in the
heavenly realms is yours, Paul. Why do you need your flesh to
be healed? You think you're going to glorify
me in the healing of your body any more or in a greater way
that you could glorify me in the healing of your soul? So Paul rejoiced to the praise
of His glorious grace. That's the work of the Holy Spirit.
Let's think of another way in which Paul identifies and expresses
these things. See how this is a different type?
I mean, there's nothing here in John's Gospel to show us that.
We have to look for us to get the picture. I want you to get
the picture, church, because I'm here to teach us together to
be satisfied in the understanding of God the Holy Spirit and what
He does. Paul going to the troubled children
in Corinth. And Paul goes to Corinth and
he says a lot of things to them, but he starts out this letter,
which by the way, some 12, 13 years ago, really was a catalyst
for me to recognize the lack of my necessity for God, of my
existence for God. He doesn't need me, but I desperately
need Him. and because He has chosen to
save me, He is glorified in my salvation, and He's glorified
in my brokenness, and He's glorified in my humility, and He's glorified
even in my sin when He brings me to repentance and reminds
me of the gospel of grace, that without, I would perish in my
sin. Paul, as he prays for this silly little church in Corinth
that's doing some bad stuff, He says, I give thanks to my
God always for you because of the grace of God that was given
you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in
Him, in all speech and in all knowledge, even as the testimony
about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking
in any gift. Now this is an outline of what
he's about to say. So for those of you who know 1 Corinthians
and the outline of it, you know what he's, you know, this is
pleasant. He's going to deal with these issues. None of you
are lacking in any gift, so as you wait for the revealing of
our Lord Jesus, who will sustain you until the end, guiltless
in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, God is faithful by whom
you were called into the fellowship of His Son Christ our Lord. Guiltless. Is that an adjective
that you would use for the church of Corinth? You better. The church of Jesus Christ is
guiltless. The church of Jesus Christ is sealed by the Holy
Spirit, the flowing of the waters of the soul, the work of the
Spirit, and all that He is, and all that He brings, and all that
He does, moving in our lives. And then Paul comes to this place
of this crazy little church, and he says, I didn't come to
you brothers. Or when I came, I did not proclaim to you the
testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know
nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And
I was with you in weakness, and I was with you in fear, with
much trembling. And my speech and my message
were hardly understandable in not plausible words of wisdom,
but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith
might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. See, if I were to get the call
some years ago to, hey, Pastor Timmons, we need a collaborative
work to help us fix this church in Corinth, they've got a problem,
or seven. here's a list, can you come help
us?" Man, I'd have put a game plan together. I'd have had an
outline of how we're going to attack each and approach each
thing, and we're going to get some counsel here, and some therapy
here, and some discipline here, and one thing after another,
and we'd all come together. I'd have even probably made up
some contracts for some of these crazy people to sign so they
know we meant business. And I'd have gone and done all
sorts of incredibly artistic and creative things And then
lo and behold, I'd have gotten there and Paul said, put that
junk in the trash. I'm preaching the cross. Why? Because the Holy Spirit's
not going to change the minds of anyone through anything but
the cross. The Holy Spirit's not going to
work in anyone except by the gospel. It's to the spring of life. It's
to the praise of His glorious grace. No matter what, it's to
the knowledge of Christ and Him crucified alone. Christ alone. 2 Corinthians 4. I could go on
and on and on. What does it say there? He doesn't
twist Scripture, but He trusts Himself in His conscience before
the men and before God. to proclaim boldly the truth
of Christ. And if anyone can't see it, it's because the God
of this world is blind to the eyes of unbeliever to keep them
from seeing the gospel." And we see that long. What is it we see there? Y'all
know it. You've sung it. Those of you who've been in sort of
like, quote, community churches, I know you've sung this song. We're afflicted in every way,
but not crushed. Perplexed, but not driven to despair. Persecuted,
but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed.
Remember that song? Always carrying in the body the
death of Jesus. We don't sing that line. We don't
like to sing praises about us dying. so that the life of Jesus
may be manifest in our bodies. For we who live are always being
given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Christ
may be manifest in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in
us, but life is at work in you, since we have the same spirit
of faith according to what has been written. I believed, and
so I spoke. We also believe, and so we also
speak. The Spirit of God gives us the ability to proclaim the
Gospel in the midst of the greatest persecution, of the greatest
suffering, to the praise of His glorious grace is not just rejoicing
with and through tears, but it's also proclaiming. It's having
the root and the foundation, the anchors that go deeper than
anyone could ever imagine about the love of God that straps us
to the certainty of our salvation, the redemption that is in Christ,
because He's satisfied again. I say this, He's satisfied God's
judgment against us. Never shall there be any elect
who will ever face the condemnation of God, because Jesus has faced
it for us. So we proclaim the gospel of
grace alone by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can go all through
the Scripture. We can go to Ephesians 3 and
4 about building up, about the gifts to the church, to teach
them about the truth of Christ, to show us the way in which we
should walk in a manner worthy, and then empower us to do so
and correct it when we don't. and to work and labor for the
sake of each other's joy, that we may fulfill the one another's,
some forty one another's in Scripture, maybe more. To carry each other's
burdens, to love one another, to pray for one another, to encourage
one another. All these things are done by
the Spirit. The Spirit helps us to build
up the body. all the while giving glory to
God. The Spirit empowers the believer. Romans chapter 8, where
it talks about the moaning and the longing for restoration,
that even the creation moans for the day to be restored to
its original glory before this fall. And then Paul says to that
ignorant church, He teaches them something. He says, and then
when we cannot pray or we're unable to pray in our weakness,
the Spirit prays for us. And I like how Paul says this,
and I'm doing this in a sort of a Passover, so it's not a
deep dig in this text, but he says, with moans and groanings
that cannot be comprehended. You know what those sound like?
We're not even thinking about praying. You ever laid on the floor and
wept so hard you couldn't think? You ever woke up every five minutes
wondering what you're going to do tomorrow? How are you going
to make it? What are you going to do? You
can't pray. And when you start to pray, what do you do? Your
mind wanders. God, the Holy Spirit, intercedes for us, church. And
it's a good thing. For God the Spirit knows the
mind of the Father. For He is God. so that He prays
perfectly, always for our good, always for the glory of God,
always in the will of the Father, perfectly, that we do not have
to labor tirelessly hoping we get it right. The Spirit of God takes away
our fear. Do not be anxious about anything,
but with prayer and supplication, rejoice. The command that Paul
gives the church of Thessalonica, rejoice. And again I say, rejoice. The Apostle James would say,
do not what? He says, rejoice when you count
it all joy. That's what he says. When you
face all sorts of trials. Peter would say in his first
epistle the very same thing, that we are able to rejoice in
the midst of our suffering, though for a little while we are tested
in our faith. It is proven to be genuine because
in the fire it is not destroyed. It comes out on the other side.
The Spirit of God is the sealer and the protector and the perfecter
of our faith. The Spirit of God gives us intimacy
with God. And I could preach a whole sermon
on that. The Spirit of God teaches us
all truth, John 16, 13. The Spirit is the seal of God, listen
to this, and the seal of the church. If I put something in
a safe and I seal it up, nothing's going to happen to it. If a judge gives an order and
he puts his seal and signature on it, nothing's going to change
it, unless one with greater authority overrides it. God has put his
seal on the church, and that seal is the Holy Spirit. The
Scripture talks about the Spirit of God being a good deposit.
It's not when you're going to buy a piece of property and they
say, you know, we want $5,000, good faith. If you renege on the contract,
we keep your money. Unless we're just like loaded,
I mean if it were a nickel or a dollar or even a fifty or a
hundred, we might go, ah, it's not worth it. Most of us are
going to make good on that. God gives His Spirit. The fullness
of God, the Holy Spirit, who is the fullness of God, is the
seal of the guarantee of the hope of the believer that God
sends His Spirit to be with His children and to keep them in
the midst of this present darkness. So it's the seal of God's promise.
There's a guarantee Ephesians 1 says that in verses 13 and
14, "...in Him you also, when you heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, you were
sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee
of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise
of His glory." I would love to teach a sermon right now on adoption,
because that is what the Spirit does. We who are redeemed are
adopted by the Spirit. The Spirit is the seal of the
elect. The Spirit is the seal of God. And in verse 39, as we
see there, I'll explain those two things in closing. It says,
now He said this about the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him
were to receive. For as yet the Spirit had not
been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." Let me explain
something very briefly about what is not said there in that
text. What is not said there is that
the Spirit of God was not around, or that He did not exist, or
that He was not at work in the life of the believer. The Spirit
of God is omnipresent. The Spirit of God works in the
life of all who have ever or will ever believe. The Holy Spirit
of God regenerated Adam and Eve and taught them the gospel. Regenerated Abel, whose blood
cries out from the grave, that would later point to Christ,
whose blood is a better covenant than Abel's. The Holy Spirit has always been
working. But beloved, there is something
that takes place, as we'll learn as we go in John's Gospel, continuing
in John's Gospel, we'll learn that the Holy Spirit's working
became permanent. His presence is always permanent,
but His working has not always been permanent until the day
that God sent Him. And we'll look at that. When
we get to John 14, John 16, we'll look at what that looks like.
But here, Jesus is saying that the seal of our guarantee is
the fact that God is with us forever. God is in you, and He
will not leave you, and you cannot rid yourself of Him. Can you
grieve Him? Yes. Can you try to ignore Him? Absolutely. but praise the Lord,
praise His glorious grace that He overcomes the will of men,
and He overrides the fallenness of our nature, and He causes
us to believe, and causes us to walk in His statutes, and
causes us to rejoice freely. The sinning of the Spirit is
to seal, and it is the power of God with the believer. And
I will ask the Father, and He will give you another helper
to be with you forever." John 14, 16. John 14, 17, continuing,
"...even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive,
because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, you know Him, for
He dwells with you and will be in you." See, that's the difference. You were indwelt by God. You
were His. John 16, 7, "'Nevertheless, I
tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.
For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send Him to you.'" Friends, listen to
what this is teaching us. The Father is not the Son, and
the Son is not the Father, and the Spirit is not the Son of
the Father, and the Father is not the Spirit of the Son, etc.,
etc., etc. They're all distinctively, individually, each person. but they are all collectively
one God. We have one God. So the fullness
of God dwelled in Christ, the fullness of God, and like the
Scripture says that God loved the Son and gives Him the Spirit
without measure, the fullness of God then dwells in us. We have Christ with us right
now. In us right now. And God is with us forever. And
beloved, I don't know of anything more exciting that we can talk
about from this text except that. Christ has promised His people
His presence. And all the things that we've
learned and we will continue to learn through the narrative of
this New Testament, to prove to us that the working of God
the Holy Spirit doesn't end at redemption and regeneration. It just gets started. So we are right to assess and
say, we cannot. I cannot continue in the faith.
We're right to assess ourselves and go, I can't be a more dedicated
believer than I am today. We're right to say, you know
what, there's no way I'm going to walk in a manner worthy of the
Lord. but we can then understand the fullness of God's purpose
in us by His Spirit. He will grow us when He's ready.
He will help us to pursue Him in His timing. We will not give
up even when we think we already have. Did you hear that? Because He will not forsake us.
Christ in His flesh is not here with us today. He is not holding
our hands around the room that we might sing, you're my brother,
you're my sister. Or I'm so glad I'm a part of
the family of God. Or whatever it is we used to sing back in
those days. And everybody's going, oh, what's happening here? You
know? It's better than that. The fullness
of God indwells each one of us so that together, when we are
together, we have a kinship that the world cannot understand.
Let me tell you something. The seal of the Holy Spirit is
the sign of the covenant. Now there's some Baptist theology
there that you might not find on the surface. You might go,
I never thought about that. Some of you are thinking, hmm. It's not baptism. It's not circumcision. It's none of those things that
are done by hands, but it's that which is done by the Holy Spirit
of God. He is the guarantee of our faith. He is the sign of
the covenant. that Christ has made with His
people. For we do not see Him, yet we love Him. And we do not
see Him now, but yet we love Him and we rejoice with the joy
that is inexpressible as we wait the outcome of our salvation,
the salvation of our souls. That's what 1 Peter chapter 1
teaches. So in this, as we close our time today, I want you to
rest on that, beloved. I've proclaimed and reiterated
the gospel of grace dozens of times today. And more importantly,
I've shown you the certainty of your salvation through the
words of Jesus. Come and drink, and you will
never thirst again. The Holy Spirit of God wells
up in you, and in doing so, all of the running, of the flowing,
of the living water of God flows from us. Let's pray. We love you so much, Father.
Because you've loved us, because you have given us your Spirit,
because You have secured us in Christ, because You have justified
us through the work of Christ. Lord, we rejoice, we hold fast,
we have faith, we see, we believe, we proclaim, we live, we walk,
we fight, we struggle, we worship, we weep with hope. We share the faith. We love each
other. We long for Your Word. There's
so many things. Lord, You get all the glory for
all of them. No one should be proud of me
for preaching today, for it is the work of Your Spirit that
causes me to do it. For my flesh, oftentimes, is
too broken and too worn out to even consider it. God, You are mighty to seal us
and save us and secure us. Let us not be afraid to consider
Your Holy Spirit at work in us. Lord, I pray that Your Holy Spirit
is working in the hearts of our children as they sit here, of
our teenagers, of those in our fellowship who are sick today
who are watching right now on the website. Father, we might
not see their faces, but we love them and we are praying for them. Lord, as we carry this message
out of this assembly, let it be powerful among us. Let Your
Word continue to do all that You've intended for it to do,
and we pray, Lord, that it would be for Your glory in our maturity,
in our growing, in our striving, in our rejoicing, in our proclaiming,
in our loving, in our giving, in our ministry to each other.
in our evangelism of the lost. We pray these things in the name
of Christ, whose name is above all names, who deserves all glory
and honor and praise, Jesus. His name is Jesus. He is the
Christ and He is our Lord. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope that this message has
encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to these messages and
other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.