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[0:00] The Gospel of John and Chapter 14. As I'm sure you know, John 14 is in the middle of that section whereby Jesus is sharing and encouraging and speaking with his closest disciples before he went to Gethsemane to pray and before his arrest, trial and death. And in those chapters, chapters 13, 14, 15 and 16 and into 17 as well, we have the most intimate words of Jesus being spoken to those he loves. Earlier in chapter 14, he's encouraged them with the words, don't let your hearts be troubled, trust in God, trust also in me. But we're going to pick up from verse 15 and read through to the end of the chapter.

[0:57] Verse 15. If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another counsellor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day, you will realise that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.

[1:46] He who loves me will be loved by my Father and I too will love him and show myself to him. Then Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said, But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?

[2:04] Jesus replied, If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me. All this I've spoken while still with you.

[2:25] But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I've said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you.

[2:41] I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. You heard me say I'm going away and I'm coming back to you.

[2:53] If you loved me, you would be glad that I'm going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I've told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you will believe.

[3:06] I will not speak with you much longer, for the Prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father, and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

[3:21] Come now, and let us leave. So we're continuing to think about the work of the Holy Spirit and His ministry amongst us, and for that reason we read from John and chapter 14.

[3:38] So if you'd like to have that open before you, we'd be picking up some themes from there and looking elsewhere in the New Testament too. I wonder if you've ever had that awkward experience of being asked to give a reference or be a referee for somebody for a job application or something else, but you don't really want to lie about them by making them sound better than they are, and you don't really tell the complete truth about them because then that would spoil them having any chance of being selected for the job.

[4:11] It's very difficult to know how to write. Well, a professor by the name of Robert Thornton, I think probably in the States, composed what he considered to be the ideal reference for somebody in this sort of troubling situation.

[4:27] Just listen to how he puts the wording. You can hear that you can take it completely one way or the other. It can be completely positive or completely negative, but just listen to how he writes.

[4:38] I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine. In my opinion, you will be fortunate to get this person to work for you.

[4:51] I recommend him with no qualifications whatsoever. Nobody would be better for the job. I urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment.

[5:05] All in all, and without reservation, I cannot say enough good things about him, nor can I recommend him too highly. It's strange, isn't it, how truth can be ambiguous.

[5:20] So that what even is untrue can sound as if it were true. It can be very confusing for us to know what is the truth.

[5:31] When we live in a world where everyone puts some spin on what they say, whether they be the advertisers or the politicians, the news reporters, or just ordinary people that we meet, no one speaks the full truth, even if occasionally they mean to.

[5:48] We've got so used to not hearing the truth, not expecting the truth, that we just don't know where we can find it.

[5:58] That's not just the case for the believer, but for the world in general. Most people don't know where they can look and turn to for truth. In fact, of course, in modern parlance, we live in a post-liberal society in the sense that there is no absolute truth.

[6:19] No one looks for or expects there to be absolute truth. There is a truth for you and a truth for me and a truth for them, but there is no absolute truth.

[6:32] Well, of course, this is because we live in a fallen world. We live in a world which has been so affected by sin that truth, along with everything else around about us, has been distorted and twisted so that men and women live untruthful lies.

[6:48] This was the case even for Paul, and this is what he quotes as he writes to the Roman believers. It is written, there is no one righteous, not even one.

[7:00] There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They are together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves.

[7:12] Their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. So it's not new. It's something that has been in the world ever since the fall, ever since Adam and Eve, the first human beings, turned away from God.

[7:33] From when Satan, as a serpent, said to them, did God really say? Sowing untruth and lies and creating destruction.

[7:44] And so as we as Christians live in this deceptive world, how can we discern truth? Even the truth about ourselves, where can we turn to find truth?

[7:56] Truth. Especially in a world where truth concerning God is so hard to find. There was a long-running, very popular science fiction series in the 90s called The X-Files.

[8:11] It had the slogan, The truth is out there. But where? That was the whole point of the program. Wherever they went, they went to find the truth. But where is the truth?

[8:22] And if it is out there, who can show it to us? Who can we trust? Who really is truthful? All of us here are corrupted by sin.

[8:36] The most godly, the most long-standing Christian, all of us. So who is there who we can trust? Well, there is really only one who can counsel us, who can teach us in the matter of truth.

[8:54] And he is spoken of here by the Lord Jesus Christ in this passage. I will ask the Father, verse 16, who will give you another counselor to be with you forever, the spirit of truth.

[9:09] During these final hours that our Lord Jesus is speaking with his disciples, he reassures them that just as he is leaving them, so he will be sending them another counselor.

[9:21] And that phrase, counselor, can be translated into advocate or helper or comforter. Someone who is going to take his place in the careful instruction and guidance of his followers.

[9:36] The Holy Spirit. It's clearly who he's referring to as we go through the passage. The helper. The word in the Greek is the parakletos, which means to come alongside.

[9:47] Para, to come alongside. Someone who comes alongside to help us, to aid us. This is one of the great and wonderful comforts of the Christian life.

[9:58] We are not able, nor are we expected, to live the Christian life in our own strength, our own power, by our own ability, our own goodness. God knows we cannot. And so he has sent to us and given to every believer his Holy Spirit.

[10:15] As Jesus says here, you know him, he says to the disciples, for he lives with you, but, he says, and will be in you.

[10:26] That was their experience at Pentecost, the experience of the Holy Spirit coming and indwelling them. As well as calling him the Counselor, and there's other titles, he is called here the Spirit of Truth.

[10:40] Not just here, but throughout this evening conversation as he has in the upper room with his disciples, there in chapter 15 and verse 26, when the Counselor comes, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.

[10:57] And in chapter 16, verse 13 as well, when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears.

[11:09] He will tell you what is yet to come. And I want to think about these occasions where Jesus speaks about and refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth. What does he mean by that?

[11:20] That's what we first need to ask. And then, how does he minister to us as the Spirit of Truth? Well, first of all, Jesus, by calling him the Spirit of Truth, means firstly that he is the true spirit.

[11:34] The true spirit of God as compared to false spirits. Though we don't see it, even as Christians, the reality is that we are living not only in a material, physical world, but we are also living in a spiritual world, in a spiritual realm.

[11:53] Just as we have a physical body, which we know and feel and touch, so also we know that every human being has a soul or a spirit. We have a spiritual dimension to who we are as we also have a physical dimension to who we are.

[12:08] And so when we go through the New Testament, we find that this is true. As Christians, we are engaged in a spiritual battle. Ephesians 6, our struggle, our battle, our wrestling, is not against flesh and blood, the physical, but against the rulers, authorities, powers, and against the spiritual forces of evil.

[12:29] Every person, whoever they are, is living in one of two spiritual kingdoms, spiritual realms, spiritual dominions.

[12:40] Here is Paul speaking to the Colossians. For God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

[12:53] Men and women without Christ are under the authority within the kingdom and the influence and the mastery of the devil. He's real. But in God's grace and mercy when we become Christians, we are lifted out of that dominion, we're set free from that darkness, brought into the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[13:12] He becomes the Lord, King of our lives. And so also, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth as compared to false spirits. For John, as he writes his first letter, chapter 4, verse 1, Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

[13:35] This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is from God is false.

[13:49] So, when Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth, he is setting him out as the true, genuine article. He is the true Spirit of God, not a false spirit, not anything other than God himself.

[14:05] but when he speaks about him as being the Spirit of truth, he is making clear as well that he is not only the true Spirit of God but the one who is of himself completely truth.

[14:18] In other words, when you meet with the Holy Spirit and when he speaks to us and ministers to us, it is only truth that he reveals. It is only truth that he deals with.

[14:28] He never deals with half-truths or with lies or with falsehoods. Remember when Jesus was speaking in John to the Pharisees who had planned to kill him, he said to them, you are of your father the devil.

[14:42] Your father was a liar from the beginning and the father of lies. That is the difference. The Holy Spirit only deals with the truth and speaks the truth. It is obvious from what Jesus promises that he will do this Holy Spirit when he comes upon them.

[15:00] 15 and verse 26, second part we read there before, who goes out from the father, he will testify about me, will speak about me.

[15:15] And then in 16, 13 again where he says, he will guide you into all truth. He never deceives, he never misleads the believer or anyone else for that matter.

[15:27] And we are going to study this particularly just to see and I want us to think about how the Holy Spirit ministers truth to us, how he reveals truth to us, how he guides us into truth, leads us into truth.

[15:39] Here we are in a world without truth. Here we are surrounded by men and women and even in our own hearts which are untruthful, untrustworthy, undependable. Well, here is the Spirit of God that has been sent to us and given to the believer who we need him.

[15:53] How does he minister to us truth? How can he lead us in truth? How can he give us as it were a clear way for all the confusion and the nonsense and the falsehood around about us? Well, the first thing that he does, the Holy Spirit, is that he distinguishes the true disciple of Jesus.

[16:12] He distinguishes, in other words, he sets the true Christian apart. He shows us that we truly belong to the Lord. Notice what he says there, verse 17, the Spirit of Truth.

[16:26] The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. This is the essential difference between somebody who is a Christian and somebody who is not.

[16:41] This is what makes all the difference in the world between someone being saved and in a right relationship with God and not. It's the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth. It's not a matter of the color of our skin, it's not a matter of our nationality, it's not a matter of our language or culture, it's not about our intellect or in our genes, it's not something that we have inherited from our parents, it's whether we know and have experienced the Holy Spirit of Truth personally in our lives.

[17:11] You can't be a Christian apart from his work. Jesus made this very clear in John chapter 3, verse 5, when he spoke about being born again of the Spirit.

[17:23] He says, I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Paul makes the same point in Romans chapter 8.

[17:34] If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. And then also in that letter of John, that first letter, chapter 4, 13, we know that we live in him and he in us because he's given us of his Spirit.

[17:51] I want to make this very plain and clear, dear friends, because there is some confusion here. You cannot be a Christian except that God, the Holy Spirit, has come and done a work of new birth, of transformation in your life.

[18:04] And therefore, it's very wrong to speak of a Christian without the Spirit. Okay? You cannot be a Christian without the Spirit. It's very wrong to say, well, that's a Christian, but he hasn't got the Spirit.

[18:15] Well, he must have the Spirit to be a Christian or she must have the Spirit to be a Christian. And if we have the Holy Spirit, dear friends, then we have all that we need, as we shall see, to live the Christian life.

[18:28] God has provided everything for us. But then, of course, it's just as false for that person to say, yes, I'm a Christian, but I don't have the Holy Spirit. Just as false to say, I'm a Christian, but I've never been born again of the Spirit.

[18:42] Just as false to say that I'm a Christian, but the Spirit of Christ doesn't dwell within me. That's wrong. You cannot be a Christian no matter how religious, no matter what experiences you've had, no matter how many times you've been baptized with water, no matter what church membership you belong to, no matter what office you hold, whether you're a pastor or whether you're a deacon or an elder or anything else, you cannot be a Christian except God's Holy Spirit has done a work in you which is known and felt and real.

[19:11] Ask those people in Nepal about the earthquake. None of them will say, I never felt an earthquake. Of course they felt an earthquake. They all knew there'd been an earthquake. So as with a Christian, dear friends, if you've known the earthquake of God, Holy Spirit giving you a good shaking and bringing you to that place of faith and you know it.

[19:30] Even if you struggle at times, even if there are times of doubting, you know that God has done a work in you. So the question I've got to put before you this evening is, have you known that?

[19:42] Does the Holy Spirit of God dwell within you? The Spirit of truth as he made his home in your heart and life? Are you trusting in that work of God in your life or are you trusting in something that happened when you put your hand up in a meeting or prayed a particular prayer or went and was confirmed or baptized?

[20:01] Are you trusting in those things that have made you a Christian or have you trusting in that God, the Holy Spirit has worked in you? Well, you may say to me, well, that's all well and good and you're making this point and laboring it rather a lot, but really, why do I need the Spirit to become a Christian?

[20:19] Why can't I be a Christian without the Spirit of God? Why can't I be a Christian by going to church and saying that I agree with these things or believing in these things? Winston Churchill is quoted as saying, men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

[20:38] There's a difference between knowing the truth about Jesus Christ and receiving the truth about Jesus Christ. That's only something that God, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth can do.

[20:55] See, the truth about who God is is not hidden from our world. People have that sort of attitude, don't they? They say, well, you know, I wish I could believe what you can, but I can't see God anyway.

[21:06] I can't see how you can believe in God. I can't, God seems to be hidden away. It's really hard to find, isn't it, to find out that becoming Christian. It's very difficult to understand.

[21:18] But the Bible makes it very clear that it's not the case. That it's not true. Wherever we look in the world, we see the testimony that God is the creator of this world and the world in which we live shouts out and declares that God is real and this is His world and we need to get right with Him.

[21:35] Here's Paul writing in chapter 1 his letter to the Romans, the Roman Christians. Since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and His divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse.

[21:56] We saw that really this week when we had Andy McIntosh with us. When you look at creation in any way and you look at the human body and you look at anything that God has made, you cannot help but see that here is the invisible attributes of God, His creative power, His wisdom.

[22:13] The reality is that evolution is an excuse not to believe in God for many people. But also the gospel itself, the gospel that is spoken, the truth about who Jesus Christ is, what He came to do.

[22:31] Yes, there are wonderful depths there that we can spend all our lives exploring and finding out and understanding, but the gospel itself is so simple that a child can accept it, understand it and put their faith in Him.

[22:46] You don't have to be an intellectual. You don't have to be someone of great learning. In fact, that can be a great handicap. Jesus said Himself, the world cannot accept the Holy Spirit.

[23:02] Notice that? The Spirit of Truth, the world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But when the Holy Spirit comes into the heart and into the life of somebody, then what was once hidden, if I put it that way, what was once ignored, what was once rejected, what was once put aside, it becomes abundantly, irrefutably clear.

[23:27] Here's Paul explaining to the church in Corinth what God has done in bringing them to salvation. He says this, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, we have not received the spirit of the world, that false spirit, that attitude of the world, that misunderstanding, that darkness, but the spirit who is from God that we may understand what God has freely given us.

[23:54] That's the wonderful thing. When you become a Christian, your eyes are opened. You see what God has given us in Jesus. You begin to grasp and understand not only that you're a sinner before God, but that God in His mercy and love has provided forgiveness and that Jesus is the one you need.

[24:12] How does He do that? What is it the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, shows us? That's so abundantly clear. Well, firstly, and above all else, He shows us Jesus. That's His ministry.

[24:23] That's His primary ministry. That's His first ministry, is to reveal Jesus to us. Here in chapter 15 of John, verse 26, when the counselor comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, He will testify, declare, speak about me.

[24:44] About me. I'm sure you have seen things like the Royal Variety performance or Sunday night at the Palladium, those of you slightly more mature than me people, and those sort of things.

[24:56] And you know that there's this great stage, isn't there? And if there's like a solo singer or a comedian perhaps or something like that or a magician, at some time during the performance, they will stand in the center of the stage and a single spotlight will shine down on them, won't it?

[25:13] And everywhere else on the stage will be dark and just this one person is illuminated for everyone to see. The rest of the stage is hidden, but just that one person is shining.

[25:24] You can't see the spotlight. The spotlight's way up in the gallery behind. Nobody can see that, but you can just see the light shining down upon that one person. That's the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

[25:36] His ministry is the Spirit of Truth. It's like that spotlight. Though he's hidden and we can't see him, he illuminates Jesus Christ. He shows us Jesus. He directs our attention to Jesus so that we set him apart as the Savior and Lord of our lives.

[25:54] didn't that? Has that happened to you, dear friends? Have you experienced that reality of one day nothing in the world mattered but Jesus?

[26:07] Nothing in the world concerned you but Jesus. There was no one that you could see, no one that you wanted more than Jesus. That was the Spirit of God. And that explains, of course, why it is that so many people can't see Jesus as being the Son of God.

[26:24] That's why so many people think of him just as an exceptional thinker or revolutionary leader, a teacher, but they cannot see him as God made man. They hear about Jesus.

[26:38] They hear the words of Jesus. They even accept that some of the things that Jesus says are helpful and useful, but they're unchanged. They're unconverted. Why? Because they need the Spirit of God.

[26:49] Without the Spirit of God coming into their lives and illuminating the Lord Jesus for who he is, they will remain eternally and forever blind. Here's what Paul says again in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

[27:02] The man without the Spirit, capital S, Holy Spirit, the man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, in other words, his word, the gospel, the truth of who Jesus is, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

[27:22] That's why you get these incredible intellectual men who study and pour over the Hebrew and the Greek and the Aramaic of the Bible and these incredible thinkers, and they study and pull to pieces and they look at literary forms and all sorts of things in the Bible, but they're never changed.

[27:42] They never come to faith. They never trust in Christ because they have not the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth to illuminate Jesus to them. And maybe that's the reason why you, you may say, well, I've read the Bible before and I've thought about the things of Jesus and I've been to church and I've been to Sunday school as a young person.

[28:00] I've grown a bit in a Christian family and I've heard all those things, but it just doesn't click with me. The penny just doesn't drop me. I just don't really grasp it for myself yet. What you need, dear friend, you need ultimately is the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.

[28:16] You need Him to show you, to convict you, to make it alive to you, make it real to you. Again, for those who are not Christians, the things that we do in a church are just weird, aren't they?

[28:32] Weird. Why are they weird? Well, because they're spiritual things. They're not things that are of the material and the physical of this world.

[28:42] They're spiritual things that we're engaged in. When we meet together as God's people, we're praying and we're singing praise to God and we're reading His Word and we're listening to Him preached. They're engaged in spiritual things. It just doesn't make sense to them.

[28:57] That's the first thing the Holy Spirit does. The Spirit of truth, He reveals the truth about Jesus. The second thing He does, and this is the wonderful thing for us who are Christians and going on in the Christian life, He doesn't stop there.

[29:07] He doesn't stop there. It's not as if, like, when we become Christians, suddenly the Holy Spirit zaps us and that's it. We've sort of got this energizing power and then we just have to keep on as we are. It's not just that once we receive Christ and we see Jesus who He is, the Holy Spirit leaves us.

[29:25] No, He carries on His work in us. He carries on ministering to us. This was the wonderful thing that Jesus said to His disciples and promised them that when I, you know, when I've ascended, you will receive power.

[29:36] The Holy Spirit will come upon you with power and you should be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. In other words, all through your life. And so we see here what Jesus says to us.

[29:48] He tells us that the Spirit of truth guides us into all truth. Guides us into all truth. John 16, verse 13. When He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth.

[30:00] Now Jesus, as we know, ministered and taught His disciples. They had the best three-year Bible college training anybody could get. And He revealed to them so many things.

[30:13] He opened their minds to so many things about Himself, about the Kingdom of God. He answered their questions. He sat down with them in small groups. He showed them His glory when He appeared on the Transfiguration, Mount Transfiguration.

[30:24] He did all these things. But, in spite of the Lord Jesus Christ, being with Him three years and teaching those things, there were things that He could not tell them. There were things that He could not teach them until He had died and been taken up into glory.

[30:40] Look what He says here in verse 12 of John 16. I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.

[30:54] You see, they were full up with truth, if I can put it that way. But, Jesus had crammed as much into their small brains as He possibly could about Himself and the Kingdom of God. But there was things that Jesus withheld from His disciples, things that He didn't teach them about or tell them about because He knew their capacity.

[31:14] It wasn't until He sent His Holy Spirit at Pentecost that the things that He longed to tell them and they needed to know were revealed to them. We read in chapter 12 and verse 16, remember the triumphal entry and John gives us an indication about the fact that the disciples just didn't understand what was going on when Jesus came in on the donkey and they laid out the cloaks and laid out the palm branches.

[31:39] He said they didn't understand this. Only, it says, after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about Him and that they had done these things to Him.

[31:49] when the Spirit of Truth came upon them at Pentecost, He not only reminded them of what Jesus had done and said, John 14, 26, the Counselor of the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I've said to you.

[32:08] That's why we know the Bible is reliable because God the Holy Spirit wasn't just dependent upon human minds and human remembrance. God the Holy Spirit empowered the Gospel writers and the Scriptures writers of the New Testament to remember the things that Jesus said.

[32:24] To lay them out for us and record them for us. But He continued as well to teach them more things concerning the Lord Jesus Christ.

[32:36] There in chapter 6, 13. I've already mentioned it again and again but just pick up what Jesus is saying. He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own.

[32:48] He will speak only what He hears and He will tell you what is yet to come. So the ministry of the Holy Spirit is not that He brings to us His own truth. Remember that way.

[32:59] You need to remember that in the ministry and the salvation and the work of God in our lives it is always the three persons of the Trinity. But what the Holy Spirit does and He did for the disciples there and He does for us is He brings to us the very things of Jesus.

[33:15] The things that He didn't speak about when He was in this world but the things that we need to know. What are they? Where do we find them? Well of course we find them in the Scriptures.

[33:26] That's what the New Testament is. That's what we have laid out before us. Holy Spirit revealing to the apostles what Christ wants them to know.

[33:38] It's there again in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 13. This is what we speak. Paul is talking about himself and the apostles not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.

[33:55] When we come to the New Testament what we have in the Bible is all the truth that we shall ever need in this world revealed by the Holy Spirit as He received it from God the Father and the Son.

[34:10] 2 Timothy 3.16 All Scripture is God breathed useful for rebuking teaching correcting training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly completely equipped for every good work.

[34:27] Holy Spirit's work has been to give us the Scriptures but more than that as well wonderfully He illuminates and brings to life the Bible so that we understand it and are able to apply it to our lives and able to take its truth so that it becomes truly truth for us and lived out truth day by day so that it doesn't remain unproductive.

[34:52] As I was saying before there are those scholars and Bible students and all sorts of professors who read the Bible and they're not changed or affected in any way except for some of them sadly their hearts are hardened more against God.

[35:05] They find more reasons not to trust Him. But for the Christian as we read the Bible the revelation of God to us the revelation of Christ to us complete and perfect the Holy Spirit then makes that word alive and we see things that we've never seen before I'm sure all of you have had that experience those of you who've been Christians for donkey's years and you read a passage and you thought I didn't see that before how come I didn't see that I've read it dozens of times and there it just leaps out and there's understanding to me that's the spirit of God the spirit of truth it's what I pray for every Sunday and I know many of you pray for me as well and those who preach the gospel what are we praying for we're praying not that some man may have the intellect and understanding to explain the Bible to us but we're praying and asking that God the Holy Spirit will take His word and make it alive even through the stupidity of a preacher that He will take that word and infuse it into our hearts and minds and change us either by challenging us or correcting us or encouraging us so that we bear fruit in our lives fruit of the truth of the spirit of God in our lives here's 1 Corinthians chapter 2 again earlier on in that passage verses 3 and 5

[36:25] Paul says this I came to you this is Paul okay Paul the great apostle Paul the church planter Paul the one through whom miracles were worked I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling my message and my preaching were not with wise persuasive words but with a demonstration of the spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom but on God's power what did he mean?

[36:53] it didn't mean that he came with miraculous signs he meant this that as he spoke an ordinary man as he spoke the way words of God the spirit of God came upon those words and shot them as an arrow into the hearts of those who heard it with power so they were changed and transformed and different people from God's word as the people who'd come in first of all so let me just close with a few questions to myself and to you do you feel your need of the Holy Spirit's work in your life day by day the spirit of truth do you find at times that when you look at Jesus in the word you fail to see him as he truly is your saviour and lord do you read the bible but find yourself unmoved by it or even indifferent to it do you know the truth about how you should live but actually find that you aren't living the life that you know you should then dear friends it's evident that in all these cases and for each one of us we need more of the help more of the enabling more of the influence more of the power of the spirit of truth and the wonderful thing is this that Jesus gives to us great encouragement to ask that he should help us and empower us more there's that lovely time in which

[38:17] Jesus speaks about asking knocking and seeking and he says this and I'll close with these words which of you fathers if your son asks for a fish will give him a snake instead or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion if you then though you are evil know how to give good gifts to your children how much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him let's just spend a moment in quietness in prayer before the Lord responding to his word asking for his help longing that he should give afresh to us his Holy Spirit O Je'o The End

[39:31] The End The End Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly, above all that we ask or even imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in His church.

[40:31]  And in Christ Jesus throughout every generation, today, tomorrow, and forever. Amen.