Frontex for today is from the Book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 22 through 40. Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs, which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. This man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of Godless men and put him to death. But God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. For David says of him, I saw the Lord always in my presence, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exalted. However my flesh also will live in hope, because you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow your holy one to undergo decay. You have made known to me the ways of life you will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the Patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seek one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead, and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus, God raised up again to which we are all witnesses. Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made in both Lord and Christ, this Jesus who knew crucified. Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brethren, what shall we do? Peter said to them, repent, in each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off. As many as the Lord our God will call to himself. And with many other words, he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, be saved from this perverse generation. The grass withers and the flower fades. Please pray with me. So we ask you, again, Lord ourselves, we want to take that question up whether we are believers or unbelievers we want to ask what we shall do now under that word. And as believers, Lord, would you grant us grace to repent of our sins again and to flee to Christ again by faith? And Lord Jesus, I thank you for your great power and your great authority, victory and triumph in this passage. And how I pray that its present reality would be pressed home upon each heart in this room so that there would not be a believer here who is not strengthened by a clear, spirit-given vision of your power and might in this instant. And that there would not be an unbeliever who has entered this room, who would leave this room as an unbeliever. How we pray, Lord Jesus, that you would even build your church through this message. Build your believers, build unbelievers into by your great resurrection power, into new living stones that you would use for your temple. Jesus, I pray for your help now so that I would not mislead your people or in some way cause them to stumble. How I ask you to come by your spirit now and bring your word home to your sheep and magnify yourself. We pray in your name. Amen. Well, we have been in Peter's sermon now. This is the third week. And it will be the last week that we are in Peter's sermon. And what we have seen so far is that Peter's sermon is the explanation that he gives by the power of the Holy Spirit in response to the question that comes out of the crowd after the Spirit has been poured out dramatically. You will remember in the first 13 verses of chapter 2 and all kinds of amazing things are being seen and heard when that Spirit is poured out. And you will remember in verse 12 of chapter 2, a question arises from the people who are in great perplexity it says. And they say, what does this mean? And Peter proceeds to give an explanation through a sermon. And that sermon has two halves I've argued. The first half, as he says, Pentecost, he says in verses 14 through 21, Pentecost is the result of God's promises from the Prophet Joel, specifically chapter 2, verses 28 through 32, those promises being fulfilled. And then last week we looked at the second half of Peter's sermon, the second half of his explanation, which is really given to explaining how it is, how it is that God fulfilled those promises from the Prophet Joel. And what Peter gives us, we saw, is actually a rather startling answer about how that promises fulfilled. Because he says, in effect, that the way the promise from the Prophet Joel is fulfilled is through the life and the death and the resurrection, the ascension and the exaltation of Christ to the Father's right hand. The way you get the Spirit, Church of Jesus Christ, is for Jesus Christ to be the incarnate Son of God to live, to die, to be raised again, to be seated at the Father's right hand. And from there, he pours the Spirit out. And so we have to understand, according to Peter, that the gift of the Spirit is the gift of the risen Jesus Christ, and a fruit of his victory and his work. Now that's what I'm going to unpack this morning. Because it's really that announcement in verse 33 that is going to be the focal point for what we do this morning. Look again with me at verse 33 so you can see it. Well, so you can see really what is a very shocking thing that gets said and has massive implications for us. Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God. Now Peter's talking about Jesus here. Having been exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the promise of the Holy Spirit, he, meaning Jesus Christ, has poured forth this which you both see and hear. Now that announcement is utterly crucial to forming a biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit's ministry. And that's important. It's particularly important in the area of the Holy Spirit because there is a lot of confusion in this area. On both sides of the charismatic aisle, I'd say. And I'm not pointing fingers at anyone else except me and my tribe, us, the Presbyterian tribe. There's a lot of misunderstanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our camp as well as other camps. And that, that's a bad thing. That's a bad thing. That's not okay because when we're confused about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, it impoverishes us and it also imperils us. You know, it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that there's a huge gap between the prominence and the priority of the ministry, the Holy Spirit, as we meet it and encounter it in the New Testament, the gap between that on the one hand and the amount of confusion about the Holy Spirit's ministry that exists within the church. And I'm not just talking about a manual. I'm talking about evangelicals, everybody in the Christian church. That's a problem for that gap to exist. And what it does is it makes Christians poor. And it also tends to and has the very dangerous side effect, I think, of making many people have false assurance that they are Christians when, in fact, they are not. And so this is utterly critical to get clear. And I could not move into the rest of chapter two without pausing and making sure that we looked at verse 33 and it's roots in the promises of Jesus in John's gospel, so that we would get our bearings, biblical bearings for the ministry, the Holy Spirit, before we plunge into the rest of the book of Acts. And I just want to highlight the urgency here because some of you may not be persuaded that this is worth spending a whole week on. I think you're wrong and I think biblically it's a very serious thing. Just think about this. It's very clear in the New Testament that the presence of the Holy Spirit in somebody's life and his work in their life is the ultimate and clearest demonstration that somebody is in fact a Christian. Now if it's important to you as it should be to know whether or not you are or are not a Christian, then it is utterly and equally crucial for you and I to be able to distinguish between a genuine presence of the Holy Spirit and his absence. Listen to some of the things that gets said in the New Testament. First Corinthians 12, 3. No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. What Peter says, Acts 238, he connects conversion with the receiving of the Holy Spirit. So Christian identity and Holy Spirit go together. Verse 38, repent. And each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. That's come. Repent. Turn away from your sintered toward Christ in faith. Now what's going to happen? And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. If you're a Christian, you have received the gift of the Holy Spirit. If you have not received the gift of the Holy Spirit, you have not been converted. That's important. And then I just read it this morning. It's so clear. Sometimes I wish God would show me these things early in the week when I'm looking for texts. And then this morning in my devotions, I read 1 John 4 verse 13, which isn't in your outline. I'm sorry, 1 John 4 verse 13. This is a wonderful one. By this, we know that we abide in him and he and us. That's important. Whatever's going to come next is really important, right? Because it's the way you know that you abide in him and he and you because he has given us of his spirit. So this is important. This is very important. So here's what we're going to do. Here's my outline. We're going to look at the roots of verse 33 in the promises of Jesus from John 14, 15 and 16. We're going to do a highlight. Just look at the peaks. And then we're going to come back and we're going to understand 233 in light of what we've learned from John's gospel. And then I'm going to conclude with pastoral applications for believer and unbelievable alike. Okay. Let's go. Now, if you go with me to John 14 because the most concentrated block of teaching on the Holy Spirit, certainly in the teaching of Jesus, direct teaching of Jesus himself is in chapters 14, 15 and 16 of John's gospel. And let's start in chapter 14. Now the setting here is important because what we're in the midst of here is what's known as the upper room discourse. This is the last evening of Jesus's life. And he is as you would expect him to be on this last evening talking about things that really matter with his disciples. He has told them that he is going to be leaving shortly. And that has provoked a response from them. I said to the kids last night as we were doing our advent devotion. I said, can you imagine being with Jesus for three years, day in and day out. How precious would that be? To listen to him. To watch him interact with people. To be embraced by him. To see your own life being changed by the power of his presence. To be corrected by him in love. To watch him feed the 5,000. To be in that boat when he stills the storm. To just watch him laugh. To see him pick up babies. What an awesome thing. And you would never want it to end. And he tells you one night that he's going to be gone. Now, he hasn't hit that for me. He's told you that before. You're going to be sad. You're not going to want that. And Jesus is very mindful of that in his disciples. And so he says some astonishing promises that if he had made them any earlier in his ministry would not have had the same power and impact. It's very, very, very important to see the timing of the setting here for some of these promises. And what Jesus does is he gives in verses 16 and 18 of John 14. He gives two assurances to his disciples that his departure will not be in abandonment. He's going to leave, but he's not going to abandon them. In a sense, he's going to leave and not leave them. Look at verse 16. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another helper, which means that Jesus is the first helper. I'm not going to get for you from the Father, a helper, because I'm that first helper. I'm going to get you another helper. Why? That He may be with you forever. I don't want you to be alone, and I know you don't want to be alone. And then verse 17. That is the spirit of truth in the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him. But you know Him. Now, that's interesting because they haven't, He hasn't come yet. Have you ever thought about that? How do they know Him when He hasn't been sent yet? You know why? Two reasons. One, He's in Jesus already. Two, His ministry, as we're going to see later, is to mediate Jesus's presence, and Jesus's power, and Jesus's person. So, His ministry will be about the identity and presence of Jesus in their midst. He already abides with you and will be in you. That's very important. Now look at what He says. He's so far He's been talking about the helper who sounds just like He's a third party, right? Now look at verse 18. Very stunning promise. And this is not a second coming promise. I will not leave you. I will not leave you. I will come to you. So, what we see there at the threshold is that Jesus is going to send a helper. And this helper's ministry, the nature of this helper's ministry is going to be to mediate and assure and bring them Jesus' personal presence. That's very important because what they need most is Jesus. His physical departure will not mean His absence from their lives. Let's go to step number two. We go beyond the promise of another helper now to what the nature of the helper's work is going to be. And that's verse 26 of chapter 15. John 15 verse 26. When the helper comes whom I will send to you from the Father, both the Father and the Son are involved in ascending, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father. Notice how Jesus describes His work. What's He going to do? He's going to testify or bear witness of me. He'll be, we know from chapter 14 the ministry of the Holy Spirit is going to be to mediate the person and presence and power of Jesus Christ in some way. Now we know from chapter 15 verse 26 that the Holy Spirit's ministry is going to be a ministry of testifying or bearing witness of Jesus. That's very significant. Jesus is going to be the sender of the Spirit, which implies that the Spirit will serve Jesus's interests, right? Sender doesn't send somebody for no reason. Jesus is also going to be the focus of the Spirit. You see that because He's going to send Him and His focus will be to testify concerning Jesus. Go to step 3. What end? What kind of testimony? What kind of witnessing will the Holy Spirit do about Jesus? What is He going to say about Jesus Christ? What's He going to tell the disciples about Jesus Christ? What's the content? In other words, of the testimony and the witnessing that the Holy Spirit is going to be bearing to Jesus' disciples? And for that, we need to go to chapter 16 verse 14. Which if I was going to point you to any single verse, and this is always dangerous to do, but I'll do it anyway. If I was going to point you to any single verse for a summary that will... If you hold fast to it and all of its particulars will not lead you astray for a summary of the Holy Spirit's ministry in the Bible, that's the verse I'd take you to. Verse 14 of John chapter 16. Now look at this. What's the content of the testimony the Spirit will offer? And what is the nature of the Spirit's ministry? He shall glorify me. This is not going to be disinterested testimony. This is not going to just be the bare, unemotional, unpowerful recitation of theological facts about Jesus. The Holy Spirit's ministry is designed to fan the flames of the recognition of the glory of Christ. The Spirit will be given to glorify Christ. And how's he going to do that? He will take of mine, and she'll disclose it to you. The Spirit will act for no other purpose and in no other way, except to glorify Jesus Christ. And how will he do that? He will take of mine, in other words, there's something Jesus possesses, right? If you want to think of it this way, a triumphant king who has been triumphant in battle has the spoils of his victory at his disposal. He will take of my fortune and he's going to show it to you and give it to you. The Holy Spirit's ministry is to scoop up the glory of Jesus Christ and to give it to you and to disclose it to you. That's very significant. Now, J. Packer has a wonderful analogy here to try to capture what the nature of the Holy Spirit's ministry is, and I just love this analogy. He's so helpful. He says that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is a flood light ministry. A flood light ministry. Not the kind of flood light you have inside a house. Don't you have flood lights in the house? Okay. Okay. Once again, I should stay out of the tool bench. But he has a picture of flood lights outside. And his whole image of the Holy Spirit from chapter 16, verse 14 is that we are standing as a believer in Christ. We are standing facing Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is behind us as a flood light casting His light onto Jesus in all of His glory so that we will see Him as He is. And that, apart from that ministry, we will not see Jesus. And so what Packer says is that statement of the Spirit's ministry in verse 14 that His agenda, the Spirit's agenda is not to glorify Himself, but to glorify Jesus. That means that the Holy Spirit is never saying, look at me. He's never saying, look at my power. He's never saying, come to me. He's never saying, trust me. He's saying, look at Him. Trust Him. Go to Him. Believe in Him. Be awestruck at Him. Worship Him. The Holy Spirit's ministry is not to draw attention to Himself. It is to draw attention to Jesus Christ. Nor in this ought to go without saying, but I need to say it. The Holy Spirit's ministry is not about us either. Not about you. Not about me. The Holy Spirit's ministry is very much like John the Baptist ministry in this sense. You remember when John the Baptist has John and Andrew with him, well, unnamed disciple and Andrew with him in John chapter 1, and Jesus walks by and John the Baptist says to His own disciples, He says, the whole, the Lamb of God. The whole, the Lamb of God. Don't look at me. Don't look at John the Baptist. Look at the Lamb of God. That is what the Holy Spirit's ministry is about. Now, with that background, the statement in verse 33 becomes very important and very powerful, I think. So back to Acts chapter 2, because what Acts chapter 2 says is that a Acts chapter 2 rests, verse 33, which tells us that Jesus Himself poured the Spirit out from the Father's right hand. That declaration rests on the promises that we have seen from John 14, 15, and 16. Verse 33 is the fulfillment of what we just read in those three chapters from John's gospel. Now, what's very important to see what to think about is who is the Jesus Christ who pours the Spirit out. If you want to understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit, right, you got to know that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is about glorifying Jesus Christ. So it's not a surprise at all to discover that the Jesus Christ who pours the Spirit out is the Jesus Christ not in the manger, not teaching by a lake, not in Jerusalem, under trial, not feeding the 5,000, not calming the storm, but the Jesus Christ who has been raised and seated in glory. That is the Jesus Christ who pours the Spirit out. How shall the Spirit operate? He shall operate to glorify Jesus. Where is Jesus's place of greatest glory, my friends, at the Father's right hand. And so the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers begins when Jesus reaches the summit of glory, which means that there is only one Jesus Christ for us to know my friends. And it's not the Jesus Christ who is in the manger. It's not the Jesus Christ who's on the cross. The reason that cross is empty is because there's a throne Jesus is sitting in right now. The reason the tomb is empty is because Jesus is sitting on the throne. There is one Jesus Christ to know. And he is no mere teacher. He is no mere moral sage. He is no mere healer. He is enthroned in heaven. He is the one who gives the Spirit and the Spirit's ministry is to exalt that Jesus Christ. Not some mere teacher. He reveals his present glory, not his former glory. And it is Jesus's present glory that is the land through which we are to view every other aspect of his life and ministry. When you read the gospels, my friends, and you read the birth narratives, are you to just think about Jesus Christ as not crucified, not resurrected, not exalted? No. What makes the manger glorious is that the one who you read about in the manger is now reading over your shoulder the same words from his throne. It is the present glory of Jesus Christ that makes the life and ministry of Jesus Christ powerful. When Jesus says in verse 14 of chapter 16, he says, the Spirit will glorify me because how he will take of mine and disclose it to you. What belongs to Jesus Christ right now, my friends? Think about it right now. In this moment, what belongs? What is it that Jesus Christ over which he says, this is mine right now? Think about his glory right now at this moment. He is the one who's addressing every heart in this room right now. It's not my Francis. He's the one who knows your hearts. It's not a little weak baby in a manger who knows your hearts. It's a king who's raised and if the Spirit is pressing down any weight upon your heart, it is the weight. Not of a mere human teacher, not of a wise man, not of a good man, but of a king in heaven right now. There is no other Jesus Christ for you to know. He is the one whom angels worship right at this instant and the Spirit's ministry is to show you and convince you and persuade you of that out by going out and looking at the clouds. How's the Spirit going to do that, my friends? Where is the Spirit going to shine upon Jesus Christ on trees and rocks and birds or on the work? This is where you will meet Jesus Christ. This is where the light of the Spirit will shine most prominently. This is where you will discover His present glory most reliably. It will not be in your emotions. It will not be an experience. It will not be at the beach. It will be here because everything else I've just listed is totally ambiguous and Buddhists and hard Christians and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims do all those things and claim to meet their gods there. But this is where the Spirit will shine. Jesus Christ hasn't moved one inch from where He is in verse 33. Not one inch. He's still there. So if you know Jesus Christ, my friends, you know the risen Lord and if the Spirit is active in your life, He is showing you that Lord and none other. So maybe you're an unbeliever and I'm glad you're here. I've got some thoughts for you that I hope will help you here. Let's think about application, how we apply these truths of the Spirit's ministry to where we are. If you're an unbeliever, I really just want to take you to verse 38 which was read because that's really the statement of your needed response. You're an unbeliever. All the talk that we've just been doing about the Holy Spirit's ministry and looking at those texts from John 14 and 15 and 16. You're a stranger to all that if you're an unbeliever. None of that belongs to you. You need to know that. So what you need to do is you need to go to verse 38. This is the response that you need. You need to listen to Peter when he says repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. So your first need is not to pursue some kind of vague spiritual experience but to come to Christ, to turn from your sins. And you won't unless the Spirit is already active in your life showing you that the summons to repentance is coming from a king who's raised to the Father's right hand and who has authority over you that the summons to repentance is not coming from Mike Francis. It's coming from Jesus Christ and he has authority to command you and he also has power now from the Father's right hand to make and keep promises to you. And so if you begin to see as you look at the word of God and as you hear it as you if you begin to see the glimpses of a mighty and a willing savior and the person of Jesus Christ then move toward him with all your might. I think a lot of people think that the conviction of sin, the feeling of the reality of their sin is the same thing as repentance and it's not because you can be convicted of your sin like Esau and not repent. You can cry your eyes out because you're under conviction of sin. You can ball for weeks because you're under conviction of sin and yet not repent. So repentance is a turning away from sin, a fleeing of it, a hatred of it and a moving toward Christ in faith. If you are beginning to feel the weight of your own sin when you look at the difference between your opinion of Jesus Christ and God's opinion in this passage, God raised him to his right hand but men killed him. And if you're more on the man side than on the God side of the opinion of Jesus Christ then if you have the slightest inkling to move toward Jesus Christ in faith, do it. If you can't, do not delay, do not think you're going to get another chance. Please be wise here. What if, however, what if you don't see him? What if you're here, you're trying, you're listening every Sunday, you're taking notes, you're struggling and you don't know what I'm talking about. What is this guy talking about for that 15th week in a row? I don't know what he's talking about. Well, let me tell you two things. The first thing you need to do is to ask God to take the cataracts away from your spiritual eyes. Would you ask him instead of being frustrated as you sit there, would you go to God and say, please Almighty God, will you take away my blindness? Be Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus, who blind man on the side of the road, he hears this big commotion. And he hears them talking about Jesus and he starts crying out, son of David, son of David, come over here, I can't see you. And then Jesus comes up to him and asks him a question which is what Jesus would ask you this morning. He bows down to this blind man and he says, what do you want me to do for you? Bartimaeus gives the right answer which is, I'd like to see. I'd like to see some David who stands there. I ask you to do that. That is a prayer that God would love to answer. But the second thing there, after I tell you to pray that, is don't expect an immediate answer. I know we're used to going through drive-through lines and that the gap between when we ask for something and when we get it at the window is, I don't know, two minutes, that feels long to us. This is way more important than a meal. And it is usually God's way, it is usually God's way in conversions to make somebody to leave them through a period of the conviction of sin. And a recognition of their own helplessness is the answer to that before he gives the definitive liberation. That is usually God's way. And he does that for a number of reasons. One is to humble us because salvation is not a reward for the worthy. It is the gift to the unworthy and the undeserving. He also does that to test geniusness. There are a whole lot of people who would pray a prayer on Sunday and then on Monday morning wouldn't give the slightest thought to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. There could be an emotional crisis. It could be precipitated here this morning. That is not conversion. So God often will wait with you. And he also does that to remove a sense of entitlement. So would you do those two things as an unbeliever? Would you ask him to remove your blindness? And would you also persevere in asking him to remove them? Now how about believers? What does this teach us? I think that the big picture of what it teaches us is that we as believers need to pursue and cultivate a Christ-centered understanding of the Spirit's ministry. Now that may sound like a throwaway line. It is not. It is not. This was Jesus' own understanding of the Spirit's ministry. We have seen that. What is the Spirit's ministry going to be about? His focus is going to be the glory of Jesus Christ, right? He shall glorify me. You want to know what the Spirit's about? He is going to be about my glory. My glory as the king over all nations and peoples. He is going to make that known. So that means that we as the followers of Jesus need to have a view of the Spirit's ministry that is in line with where Jesus is. So let me encourage you. Let me encourage you not to forget Jesus' own words in John 16. I encourage you not. I encourage you against unquestioningly equating flash and power and excitement with the authentic presence of the Holy Spirit. May or may not be counterfeit. If the point of the Holy Spirit's ministry is to glorify Jesus, then the way you test authentic spirituality and authentic experience is, does Christ become clearer? Do I see Him clearer? Not is there fireworks? The question by which you test all experience is, does it draw attention to Jesus? If it does not, then it is suspect, just on the authority of John 16, 14. If the experience or your spiritual life is not about looking at Jesus Christ more clearly, seeing Him and seeking Him more clearly and seeing more of His ministry disclosed and unfolded for you, that is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not at work there. So that is a challenge to those and we all are here at some points. That is a challenge. I mean it as an encouragement to push you in the right direction. But it is a challenge to those of us who tend to be more experienced oriented in our discipleship. Now, how about for those of you who have never spoken in tongues, who have never seen the flash, who have never seen the dynamite, who have never had great emotional waves of love for God come over you? Are you just the side of the road? Are you yesterday's news? Do you have the spare about whether or not the Spirit is active in your life? Let me encourage you. Let me encourage you with the implications of verse 33 here, because the issue is not, do you speak in tongues? The issue is not whether you have these great mountaintop experiences. The issue, my friends, is do you know Jesus? Do you know Him as He is? And are you growing in that knowledge? Do you see the clarity of Jesus Christ, His lordship, His power is a high priest. Jesus Christ is a sufficient sacrifice for you as an unfailing intercessor, as a faithful shepherd over you as a sheep. Is your understanding of those things and your grasp of them biblically increasing? Is your confidence in the biblical promises about who Jesus is? Is it rising in your life? I didn't say, is it as high as Mount Everest? I said, is it rising? Is it growing? Is it developing? Are you maturing? Are you a little bit farther along than you were last year? If you're seeing Jesus as He is, as the Bible presents Him to us more clearly than we encourage, that is the Spirit's work without fireworks. Because you know how that usually happens, by the way, that happens not in lightning bolts, that happens in step after step, day striving to look at Christ to the world and in fellowship with Him. It's not sexy, it's not dramatic, it's not going to make the news, but that's where the Spirit is truly authentically active and present. Now, let me say this now. Well, actually, let me say one more thing and I'm going to share something that I learned this week. I learned this whole thing, but there's one thing in particular that spoke to me. So powerful. Let me give you a caution then. If it's not true in your life that your ability, not your ability, excuse me, that's the wrong word. If it's not true in your life that you are seeing Christ more clearly as the Bible offers Him to us and as He is at the Father's right hand in all of His triumph and glory, if that's not happening and if you're not farther along than you were, even a little bit and you're not farther along than you were six months ago, then you need to be concerned. And the way I love you best now is to warn you, is to warn you that there is a very real danger that you were never converted to begin with authentically because when you are converted, you receive the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit's ministry is to glorify Jesus Christ. He will glorify Jesus Christ by showing us the risen Lord Jesus Christ, which means that your life should be producing, as you see that biblically, submission and obedience and a delight and just a worship and an adoration of this exalted Christ. If those things are not being produced in your life, then what basis do you have for believing that you have the Spirit? And therefore, what basis do you have for believing that you're Christian? So maybe some of you need to hear verse 38 who think that you are believers. So that's the way I love you, is by telling you that. Let me close with this as we go to the table. For some of you this will be news, probably for none of you. I am a very emotional person, bulletin, right? Very emotional person. And so one of my struggles in my whole 23 years as a Christian has been to navigate through my Christian life and figuring out, what is the role of my emotions in my Christian life? How do I understand these emotional depths that I seem to have, that I go really high and swing and I'm a wreck? And in particular, one of the areas that has been a struggle for 23 years is understanding God's love for me personally. And so often I have been in the presence of glorious text and felt like what I was doing was looking at somebody else's picture of the Grand Canyon. Really wanting to be there so desperately, recognizing its beauty, finding it lovely, saying, oh I won't go, but never feeling like I've been there. Maybe some of you can relate to that. That's why I'm sharing this with you. Because I think this is not just a mic problem. I think this is a Christian problem. Let me put myself on the operating table and show you how kind the Lord Jesus has been to me and I hope this would be an encouragement to you. Now, that's a big issue because the love of God is central and specifically the love of Jesus Christ is totally central to the life of the Christian. So if you're set up and wired as I have been to understand love most easily as an emotion, then the Christian life is going to present you with all kinds of challenges, right? Because the Christian life is not about emotions fundamentally. It's because they're there and sometimes they ain't. And if you become persuaded by the lie that if the emotions ain't there, the reality ain't there, you're going to die. So you've got to fight. You've got to fight with truth. And so in John 14 verse 21, Jesus makes an amazing promise. Why don't we go back to John 14? Let me show you what I'm thinking about here. It relates to the Holy Spirit's ministry and the context of a passage on the Spirit's ministry. And in verse 21, Jesus says, he who has my commandments and keeps them, right? Love me, my Father, and let me remind you again that I will love you. I will last phrase. And I will disclose myself to the Hebrews. I will disclose myself to that person. Now that's the ministry of the Holy Spirit, isn't it? Didn't we just see that from chapter 15 verse 26 that the Spirit's ministry is going to be to testify about Jesus, right? So the way you see the point of what Jesus is saying in verse 21 is, he's saying, the way I'm going to love you is by disclosing myself to you. Not, and I will love him and will give him an emotional high. Not I will love him by making pain, leave his life. He's saying, I will love him best by disclosing myself to him. My friends, that is the ministry of the Holy Spirit to disclose Jesus to us. How, how else could we know the love of God and specifically the love of Jesus Christ, unless the Holy Spirit was active in our lives? What, my friends? And this is what I saw with a freshness that just liberated me. What is the greatest way for Christ to show his love for me, to show me himself? Because what is the greatest treasure in the universe? What is the treasure in the universe that God holds up as here is the greatest power? It's Jesus. Which means, my friends, that you and I must stop if this is your struggle as it is for me, must stop our quest for an emotional experience. And what we must do instead is ask the question of ourselves, do I see by God's grace? Do I see the exalted Christ of the Scriptures in His power and in His majestic saving mercy more accurately than before? Is my confidence in Him rising? And if the answer to those questions is yes, it is not because I got smarter. It is because Christ Himself, the sender of the Spirit, verse 33, is lavishing His love upon me personally. With every phrase of every verse I memorize or hold close to my heart that reminds me of what is true about my lovely kingdom. That is where the love of God is expressed so dramatically by giving us Christ. And so my friends, the table where we go now is a place where Christ means to disclose Himself to you, to love you by disclosing Himself to you. So I plead with you that you would come to know Him and cherish His love as He sovereignly and wisely gives it to us, not as we would seek it in emotions and in experience. Let's pray. Lord, I pray now that my own words are not just unbelievable, that any of you are precious sheep for whom you died. And I pray that now from the table we would be fed and we would be strengthened and encouraged in fellowship with you and with one another to your glory. We pray in your name. Amen.