Would you take your Bibles, please, and turn to John, the gospel of John, chapter 16? As Jesus tells us about the ministry of the coming helper, the Holy Spirit, one of the things that I have noticed in life as a parent and as a pastor, is that it's difficult to motivate people to follow God and to obey the Bible when they are either sad or discouraged or full of fear. In fact, I've come to believe that the opposite of faith is not unbelief, but fear. Jesus is at a point in his life in this upper-room discourse, this farewell discussion. He's having with the apostles the night before he was crucified and he's preparing them for two things. This great and long discourse he has only has two points to it. One, that he is going to go to the Father to a place where for a time they cannot come. And two, he's not going to leave them alone. He's going to send to them the gift, the promise, the friend, called the Holy Spirit. So Jesus Christ is really preparing his church for life with God in the world without the physical presence of Jesus Christ. You know, oftentimes we hear people say, and maybe you've thought this way, I know I have. You say, you know, I wish I would have been alive when Jesus was on the earth. But actually, Jesus says it's better that you were not, because you and I are living in a better age than the age in which Jesus Christ was present on the earth. That's hard to believe, but it's true. And what makes it true is the words of Jesus Christ here. You can imagine the apostles, they had been around for a while and they had seen Jesus Christ do absolutely miraculous things, powerful things. And they had seen him do everything from multiply lows and fishes and turn water into wine to raising people from the dead. There was nothing, nothing that Jesus couldn't do. And they with Jesus Christ were an invincible force for God in the world. They had seen their own lives and ministries impregnated with the power of Jesus Christ. And in his name, they had done virtually the same things. And then Jesus says, I'm going to go away for a long time and you will be in this world without me. That made them sad. That discouraged them and it filled them with great fear. We know this because of the way that Jesus talked to them in chapter 16, beginning in the second half of verse 4. I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. But now I'm going to him who sent me and none of you asked me where are you going. But because I have said these things to you, sorrow is filled your heart. 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. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer. Concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own authority. But whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me. For he will take of what is mine and declare it to you all that the Father has his mind. Therefore I say that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. Jesus Christ clearly and openly says it is better for you boys that I leave this earth and that the Spirit come than if I were to stay with you forever, even in my glorified state. And so saying this, Jesus Christ does not hinder the church with three problems. Number one, he does not leave us as a gospel religion in chain to the past. Unlike all other religions in the world, the Christian faith is a living faith. It is not just imprisoned by the past. We are anchored in the past. We are rooted in the past. We are rooted in the God of history who manifest himself and became incarnate in our history. But we are not chained to the past. We are a religion that looks to the future. We are always moving forward, always believing that Jesus Christ is making all things new and that things are getting better for the Kingdom of God. Secondly, in saying this, Jesus Christ has not left us without a powerful witness. Imagine that if Jesus Christ were still on the earth and we were sharing Jesus Christ with people around the world, we wouldn't see many converts. Because most people would say, oh, this is very interesting, but I'll tell you what, I'll believe it. When I talk to Jesus Christ face to face and how many of those people around the world do you think could go to Jerusalem, to Israel, to Palestine? Where Jesus Christ in his body was located in one place, in space and time, and how many of them would go and encounter the living Christ and come to faith. And thirdly, he has not left us only with his words. If Jesus Christ had stopped giving us revelation from God with the end of the gospel of John, with just Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then our arsenal of special revelation would be limited to something that a man said a long time ago in a different context, in a different place and time, that would not really apply to modern men. But Jesus Christ has done none of those things. He has given to us the Holy Spirit who has first of all brought us into a new age, the age of the Spirit and the gospel and the church in the world. He, a second of all, left us with a powerful witness. He says several times that the Spirit will be his witness and he is witness with a capital W. And thirdly, he has given us not only the words of Jesus Christ, but the whole corpus of Scripture and faith in dogma of gospel religion. He has left us well-equipped and greatly enriched and empowered to go forward in our Great Commission. So I want to look at those three things this morning. I want to look at how first of all the Holy Spirit has begun the new age of the Spirit, how he continues to broadcast the gospel as the witness of God around the world, and how he has blessed us with the gospel religion and all of the churches. Look at this first point. The Holy Spirit has begun the age of the Spirit. Look again, verse four. I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. Now, he doesn't mean I haven't told you before that I'm going, but he told them several times, even this evening, in chapter 13 and 14 and 15, that he was going away. What he means is I have not told you up to this point that after I leave persecution will come and that you will suffer from my sake. That is what he had not told them. DA Carson says, Jesus has not earlier spelled out the full dangers of persecution because he was still with them and could largely protect them by absorbing all of the opposition himself, thus reflecting it from them. Indeed, his arrest that evening would prove to be the last time that he would serve the disciples in that way. No, Jesus had said, up to this point, I told you I was going the way, but now I'm telling you when I go away, difficult times will come. This makes them sad, sad because Jesus was leaving them discouraged because they didn't know if they had the equipment and the way with all to do what Jesus Christ had told them to do and afraid of this persecution. But Jesus says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go, the spirit, the helper will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. What Jesus is saying is this, that as soon as he raises himself from the dead and goes back to the Father, the third stage of redemptive history, the age of the spirit will begin. Stage one was in the Old Testament, the age of God the Father, working through a chosen people, Israel that served one purpose and one purpose only, to be the incubator for the conception, the incarnation, and the nurturing of one who would be God in the flesh, a Jew who would save the whole world from their sins, first Jesus said salvation is from the Jews. Phase two of this redemptive history was a short period of time, 30 to 35 years, in which this Jesus Christ dwelt on the face of the earth, and it is recorded for us in the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. Phase three, stage three of this great history of redemption comes on Pentecost Sunday, from Pentecost to Portusia, from the coming of the Spirit to the coming of Christ again, is this length of time in which you and I live, now 2,000 years in counting, and it is to our advantage that we are living in these last days than in these previous two phases of redemption. This should encourage us, as it encouraged the Apostles, first of all, Jesus would not leave them on their own, but would send the Spirit with them wherever they may go. One of the advantages is, as Jesus Christ sent these Apostles out all around the Mediterranean world, he sent the Spirit inside them to go with them. If Jesus Christ had remained in Jerusalem, in his incarnation, he could not have said to us, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age, he could not have gone with us. Jesus Christ in his body could not be more places than one place at a time, but with the Holy Spirit, he is with us always, even to the end of the age. I will never leave you, or forsake you, he said, he will always be with us. Second, the Spirit is coming with no longer limit redemption to just the time and place of Jesus Christ. Now, it is important. Leslie Lubigant says it is important that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ because that roots or rivets the revelation of God in historical time and place. The heart of the public record and the great story of mankind, Jesus Christ, God is one of us, like us. In all things, the author Fibru says except for sin. But if Jesus Christ had remained here in the flesh, it would have limited revelation to the rest of the world. When I mentioned earlier, they could not have known about Jesus Christ unless they went to Jerusalem where Jesus was and encountered him personally. Because they would not have to exercise faith in Christ, they would want to see him face to face, and many of them would not make that journey and they would not be saved. Thirdly, the coming of the Spirit guarantees us that the final phase of redemption has come. We were in these last days, as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, now these things happened to them as an example, they were written down for our sake upon whom the end of the ages has come. Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, has inaugurated the last days, the end of the age, the clock is ticking and the Spirit is moving in the world. In ways and in places that Jesus Christ in the flesh could not do. That is why Jesus Christ earlier had said when the Spirit comes, you will do greater things than I have done. We would save people, but that we would take in greater effect and in greater scope and effect in greater numbers through the Holy Spirit, the people of the world, because the age of the Spirit has come. But it wouldn't be us who would be doing this. If Jesus Christ had just said that, we would have said, these 12 got 11 guys who said Jesus, that's a real sweet sentiment, but how in the world are we going to do greater things than you have done? How are we going to affect the whole world? How are we going to convince people to believe in you as the Messiah if we have nothing to show them, to prove that you are the Messiah, except that you were once with us for a short season. And now you sit on a throne in heaven that they cannot see and do not believe in. And Jesus said, I'll tell you how it's going to work. I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit and He's going to broadcast the gospel religion to the whole world versus 8, 9, 10, and 11. And when He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin because they do not believe in Me, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and He will see Me no longer. Concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. Jesus states here clearly that the Holy Spirit will carry on the gospel witness of Jesus Christ. He will spearhead and open up venues and opportunities and fields of witness for the apostles and disciples and church will come after Him. And He will extend the message and ministry of Jesus in ways that the disciples could not ever have foreseen. When He comes, He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Three things, the Holy Spirit, will literally in Greek it reads He will convince the world about sin and about righteousness and about judgment concerning sin because they do not believe in Me. That is the essence of sin, unbelief. And He will convict the world of their unbelief, of their sinfulness, the same way Jesus had done. Look in the paragraph previous to this in chapter 15, verse 22, Jesus said, if I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen and hated Me, both Me and my father. And Jesus says this Holy Spirit will continue to have this convicting work in the lives of people. He will continue to work in the conscience of men and convince them of two things that they are not right with God. They are guilty according to the standards of their own conscience. This moral compass written on their hearts to ten commandments, to their religion, whatever it may be. They never rise to the level of their own beliefs. They never live as well as they profess and that they are full of unbelief. In the end, the Holy Spirit will convince men that they are trusting in no one but themselves and that is inadequate to receive favor in life from God. Second, the Spirit will convince the world of righteousness, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you will see Me no longer. This is the only place in the Gospel of John where this little word that Paul uses all the time in his reigns. Di Chiosune, this word for righteousness or justice or rightness. It's the only place that John uses it here in chapter 16, verse 10. And the Holy Spirit will convict the world of the righteousness of God because Jesus has raised Himself from the dead. Gone to be with the Father. This is how Paul opens up his great Gospel treat. He's called Romans. That Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God with power through the resurrection from the dead. And He will call men. He will call men to faith in Christ, this Holy Spirit. If unbelief is the essence of sin, then the essence of righteousness is faith in Jesus Christ. It says of Abraham. He believed God and it was counted for Him as righteousness. This is the beginning chapter, the opening chapter of the Gospel of Romans. I am not ashamed of the Gospel of God, where it is the power of God for everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God has been revealed from beginning to end so that the righteous man might live by faith. But the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all that is unrighteousness. For even though they knew God is God in their conscience, they would not order Him as such. But became foolish in their speculations, bowed down to graven images made in the form of the lower creation, defiled their flesh, depraved their minds, gave themselves over to decadent actions. And when they compared their unrighteousness to the righteous one revealed in the Gospel, they were convicted about righteousness. And thirdly, the Spirit will convict the world of judgment concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. The Spirit will convince them of how unrighteously they treated Jesus Christ when He was here, not supposing that they would treat Him any better than were He living in an apartment in Jerusalem to this day, of how they deserve judgment for their sins against God and others, and how they will go the way of Satan because the ruler or prince of this world stands condemned. Jesus had already said in chapter 12, now is the judgment of this world, for now the rule of this world has been cast out. As Holy Spirit works in people's lives, they begin to see the world's unrighteous and faithless and self-absorbed system, is that which leads to corruption and death. They can see as we do the world around them crumbling and collapsing, and if their faith is only in this world and the things of this world, they are convicted, there is a greater day coming, a day of judgment, and it is that judgment that they often fear, that leads them and pushes them towards Jesus Christ and His church. What Jesus is saying is something that our Christian religion has professed for a long time, that the Holy Spirit is the Lord of the conscience. You can persecute the church, you could burn all the church buildings in the world, and in prison and kill every minister, and take away every Bible, in fact, you could kill every Christian in the world, every one of them, but the witness of the Spirit cannot be silenced. You cannot stop and silence the voice of the dead as able, and Hebrews 11 says, though he is dead yet he still speaks, you cannot silence the record of history in the Old Testament, and in times of Jesus Christ, and in the acts of the Apostles, and in the history of the church, but most of all, you cannot silence the voice of the one who is Lord of the conscience, through general revelation, through creation, and conscience, and culture, and through the special revelation of Christ, and the canon of Scripture in the church, the Holy Spirit surrounds and bombards with the conviction of the conscience, every single human being, because we cannot silence His witness. I remember when I first became a Christian, someone gave me a book, I wish I could remember the name of it, I searched for it for years, and I just can't find it, but it was a fascinating story about a young man who was a pilot, an up-and-coming pilot in the Russian Air Force. He had joined the Communist Party, because he was such a sterling young man in terms of his leadership skills, and his abilities as a pilot, the Communist Party had groomed him for leadership, and in his leadership to become a senior officer in the Soviet military, one of his assignments was to keep track of a little house church that met in his hometown village, out in the eastern parts of Russia, and to put an end to it. So one day with his young officer friends, after he had stalked and kind of watched these Christians for months, he broke into an apartment one time where they were having a Bible study. He was a young girl in that village that he had always liked, but she had always shunned him because she was a Christian, and he was a Communist. So he took her in front of everybody, and he spanked her, he said, until pieces of her flesh came off on my hand. I spanked her until she was unconscious. Then I threw her and everybody else in jail, and I burned the Bibles, and I burnt down the house in which they had the church. And then I took another assignment, he said, and I became guilty in my heart. I felt terrible about what I had done. The one thing you had done that night is he burned all the Bibles, is that he'd saved one for himself. The New Testament of this little girl, he'd be unconscious, and he would sneak off into the woods, and he would read that Bible. Until he became a Christian. He defected to the United States. He flew his jet to Vancouver, British Columbia, and then he visited the United States. He told the story of how he had heard how the United States was a horrible place, how Christianity had ruined it, it was a violent and filthy and poor place, and what he saw on TV was Hollywood presentations. Unbelieving he said to the U.S. people in the government, he said, I want you to put me in a plane, and I want you to fly me to any city I choose. And so they said, okay, he picked Houston, Texas, and so they flew him there. He said, this is all staged. I want to go pick a Kansas, so they flew him there. He said, I want to go to Columbus, Ohio, and they flew him there. Miami, Florida, and they took him there. And then he said, I realized that all I had been told all my life was alive about America, that the gospel had changed this land, unlike mine. I'm sad to say that he didn't survive. He became an American citizen, then immigrated to Canada, the KGB found a few years later, and they murdered him one night, when he was coming home from church. But he could not escape the witness of the Holy Spirit in his conscience, for all that he had done, for all that he was, for all that he could have been that was not. And through the word, the word he read in the woods that night, and through the witness of the church, he had beaten unconscious, and through the convicting word of the Holy Spirit, he was brought to Christ. That is what Jesus Christ said, the Spirit. He will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. And in so doing, he will do one third and wonderful thing. He will bless the world with gospel religion. Look at verse 12. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak of his own authority. But whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare it to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you, all that the Father has is mine. Therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. Here's the fifth and the final statement about the Holy Spirit in this gospel upper room discourse, that the Holy Spirit will come and tell us about many things that Jesus wanted to say and did not, and about the things that are yet to be. He will give us the four accounts of Jesus Christ's life, the Gospels. He will help Dr. Luke a physician write the early history of the church. He will give to Peter and to Paul, to John and to James and to others, 21 epistles, and finally through the great and mysterious book called The Apocalypse or the Revelation, he will tell us about the consummation of the ages. He will take everything that the Father has in the Old Testament, and everything that Jesus had said in the Gospels, and add what he has to say about God and man and sin and salvation in the future of history in the New Testament books of the Spirit. These acts of the Apostles are not the acts of the Apostles, they are the acts of the Holy Spirit. He's mentioned more and the book of Acts than any other place and the entire New Testament, in fact in the entire Bible. In our history, the history of the church is not the history of us, it's the history of the Holy Spirit at work in the world through the Word and the church, convicting men of sin and of righteousness and judgment. He will inspire, he will breathe the concepts, the truths, the realities of revelation into the mind of the Apostles. He will superintend their writing of these scriptures, for no scripture has ever been a matter of one's own interpretation, but men carried on by the Holy Spirit will speak for God. He will illuminate, as Jesus said, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said. He will enlighten our minds to understand the Word of God with the mind of Christ, and he will give it power. It's because of the Holy Spirit that the Gospel is the power of God's faith, it's because of the living Spirit, the Word of God is living in active and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit and joint-ameros. He will be able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart of any and every human being. There's always been this way, but in one very important sense, Jesus is saying the Holy Spirit will be unleashed on the world that he has he has never been before. He will complete the great body of revealed truth. He will write the final pages and chapters of the Word of God, and not only that, he will form the Christian religion. It is the Spirit who will build the church that I said I would build and the gates of hell will not stand against. It is the Spirit who would help them survive and persevere through difficulties and death and destruction. It is the Spirit who would give you the sacraments and empower them with His presence and work through the Word and through fellowship and through prayer, through the means of grace. It is the Spirit who would guide you in your confessions and creeds and catechism. It is the Spirit who will tell you what body life is like. He will give you spiritual gifts and empower those gifts from ministry. He will give you the spiritual disciplines and to break those with His own presence so that you grow in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Everything you are and everything you have and everything you do will be because the Spirit is giving you all these new things. And in the process he is preparing the world, the new heaven and the new earth to receive Christ and His people at the consummation of the age. What a marvelous friend we have in this one called the paraclete, the helper, the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit and the Word and the church who are carrying on Christ's mission in the world today. John started at the beginning of his great commentary on Acts. In the upper room Jesus promised the apostles that the Spirit of truth would both remind them of what he had taught them and supplement with what he had not been able to teach them. Now Jesus commands them to wait in Jerusalem until this promise gift of the Spirit had been given. Not until God had fulfilled His promise and sent them the Holy Spirit, would they be clothed with power on the high, nor could they fulfill their great commission? It is true in a secondary sense of all the disciples of Jesus that they can claim that He has chosen them and revealed Himself to them by the Spirit. The Spirit commissioned them as His witnesses and promised to give them the one who would never leave them, always be with them, this gift of the Holy Spirit. Every person in the world ever converted has been converted by the Holy Spirit who convicted them of sin and of righteousness and enjudgment. There was a professor of Medieval languages at an English university named Clyde Staples Lewis. And he watched his Christian friends and he thought they were weird. He thought they had belief in this, what he called a mythical religion, Christianity. So he borrowed one of their Bibles one time. He said, I'm going to read this and the next time we meet at the White Horse Inn to talk about things. I'm going to convince you that your religion is a myth. And the next time he came to the White Horse Inn, he was a Christian. He said, I was convicted of my own self-righteousness, of my own baseness and of judgment I did not want to face in the future. Sin and righteousness and judgment. I remember reading that one time the American Bible Society were passing out new testaments in Africa. They met this man who was a Muslim and they tried to give him a Bible and he said, you know, I don't want it. The only reason I want that is because I roll my own cigarettes and I'd like that fine paper as a cigarette. So the American Tracks Society man said, fine, you can have this if you make me a promise. You'll read every page before you smoke it. He said three years later before I rolled John 3.6 day and I read it and he became a Christian. He smoked himself into the Kingdom of God. Guy named Louis Imperini was a World War II airman. He was a bombardier on a plane and it crashed in the Pacific. His story is written in the wonderful book by Lord Hill, a man called Unbroken. And he was a drift for months upon months. It's probably been surpassed but by the time he was finally come ashore, he had set a world record for surviving at sea on a raft. He and another guy, the son of a preacher, and as soon as they came ashore, they were captured by Japanese soldiers and they were tortured for another two years. At the end of that war, he couldn't sleep through a night without waking up with fears and dreams and nightmares of the one he called the bird. This guy who tormented him because he was a Christian in these Japanese camps who followed him from camp to camp and beat him to within inch of his life regularly. He became an alcoholic. His marriage was failing and then in 1949 his wife Cynthia said, would you come with me tonight to attend meeting and hear a young man from North Carolina named Billy Graham? And Louis said to keep her from nagging me to death, I said sure, I'll go hear the fool. And the first night Billy Graham bored into his life about how he was a sinner and he lacked the righteousness of God and the judgment was coming. That was Billy's message. And he said he got so angry he walked up and he stormed out of the place. And all the next day, which was Saturday, his wife nagged and he said I'll go hear him one more time but when he says every head bowed and all eyes closed, I'm going to get out there before I kill him. She said fair enough. And so that night Billy Graham said, I want every head bowed and all eyes closed and as Louis stood up to leave he said, no one leaves till I'm done. Louis said to defy him, I locked my fists and started towards the back door of the tent and then he said all of the sudden I saw my wife. And all these people with their heads bowed and I heard Billy Graham inviting me to the love and righteousness of Jesus Christ. And for reasons he said, I can't explain to this day I turned around and went forward and I received Christ that night. He saved his marriage and led him into ministry. He's 94 years old and he was signing copies of Unbroken at Billy Graham library a few weeks ago and signed a copy for Pastor Mike in which he said Pastor Mike be hearty. Sin and righteousness judgment. 1974 young lady was converted by campus crusade for Christ. And two days later she went out with a boy she knew young man and she told this young man, I can't go out with you anymore. I'm a Christian and you're not. Over dinner that night they talked about things and she said to the young man, you are not far from the kingdom of God. He graduated from his program and he went to another city to take a job. And as he entered that new town he said, you know, I really need to go to church and join the Bible study something he'd never done in his life and he did. And then his friend at work invited him to come to his church because they did Bible study all the time and so he went. And almost two years to the day after that girl told him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. He was converted and that young man was I convicted of sin, my sin and righteousness, the righteousness of Jesus Christ and the judgment of God that I would never face. Because I haven't already been judged in Jesus and had been found guilty. How about you this morning? How many of you have faced the Holy Spirit and thought about your sin, righteousness and judgment? That's what this table is about. Jesus Christ washing away all of your sins with the blood that you now drink. Jesus Christ giving to you his righteousness as he gave you his flesh. Jesus Christ calling you away from judgment and into the community of the Spirit for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is a table for believers, a table for people who have been born again on the Spirit, who have confessed their faith in Jesus Christ, who have been baptized in the Spirit and in the water and joined a Bible believing church. This is a table for those who are in fellowship with Christ, good standing with their church and a loving relationship with their brothers and sisters in Christ. All those people who meet those qualifications are invited here by the Holy Spirit to be filled with His grace and to be renewed. And those who do not meet those qualifications are encouraged to wait upon the Spirit in this room today and to say to Him, oh, Spirit of the living God, I open up myself to you. Convict me of sin and of righteousness and of judgment and give me faith in Jesus Christ that I might live with you forever. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit for His remarkable way in which He takes of that which is you and your sons and continues to give it to us through His witness in the world, convincing us about our sin and Christ righteousness and a judgment day that is yet to come. We do bow before that Spirit now. We ask as the hymn writer once wrote, Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. We ask you to examine our souls as we examine ourselves before we come to this table that we might not eat and drink judgment to our self as Paul says by doing this in an unworthy manner, but coming in faith and in baptism and in obedience to the Spirit in the Word and the church. We might enjoy the full fellowship of the Spirit in Christ and be renewed in our souls. We will be with those and give to those who ask the gift of the Holy Spirit this morning. Save them from sin, from unrighteousness, from judgment. Bring them to Christ we pray that they might receive the gift of life by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit for we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.