In the sermon 'Not Made to Stumble' by Scott Brown, the speaker explores Jesus' teachings from John 16 on the coming challenges His disciples will face and the promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus warns His disciples about the persecution they will endure, emphasizing that the world's hatred will come because the persecutors do not know God. Despite this, Jesus comforts His followers by explaining that His departure is necessary for the Holy Spirit to come. The Holy Spirit, described as the Spirit of truth, will guide believers in truth, convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and glorify Jesus. The sermon highlights the role of the Holy Spirit in enlightening believers and empowering them to face trials with faith. It emphasizes the importance of being forewarned and forearmed by the Word of God to avoid stumbling in faith.

Please open your Bibles to John 16 verse 1. We'll begin in verse 1 and read to verse 15. These things I have spoken to you that you should not be made to stumble. They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming.

That whoever kills you will think that he offers service to God. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father or me. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes you may remember that I told you of them. And these things I did not say to you at the beginning Because I was with you, but now I go away to him who sent me and none of you asks me Where are you going? But because I have said these things to you sorrow has 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 depart I will send him to you and When he has come he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment, of sin because they do not believe in Me, of righteousness because I go to My Father and you see Me no more, of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. However when he the Spirit of truth has come He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak. And He will tell you things to come.

He will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore I said that He will take of mine and declare it to you." Let's pray. Oh, Lord, we thank You for this marvelous instruction on the person and work of your Holy Spirit whom you sent as our helper to convict the world. Oh Lord, we're so grateful for setting us a right in the way that everything really is in the world.

Thank you for telling us the truth about the future. Lord, we pray that you would come and set captives free, that you would lift up any brokenhearted, that you would encourage your people, that you would equip the saints for the work of the ministry, that you would come and teach us the ways in which we should go. Amen. Please be seated. Again, we find ourselves in the middle of the upper room discourse.

The Lord Jesus Christ has announced that He is leaving. He is comforting His disciples. The whole of the upper room discourse here that runs from chapter 13 all the way to the end of 17 our words of comfort Jesus is comforting his disciples in every way possible. He has laid upon them so many promises. He has told them marvelous things that he will do and also who they are to him.

And if you go back and read that you'll see all of this but you also see that he speaks the truth in love and he gives them a sense of the hard things that are coming that the hard things won't make them stumble And the Lord Jesus is here and He is affirming His love. For them, if you want to learn about the love of God through Jesus Christ, the upper room discourse is a great place to camp because in every phrase you find a word of love and kindness from the Lord and he's also warning of the coming persecution and the role of the Holy Spirit which will come and convict the world and to really do the work that God has called them to do. God by His Holy Spirit will do the work that He calls them to through His Holy Spirit. It's very interesting If you watch the flow of the upper room discourse, the Lord Jesus Christ gives words of affirmation and love all the way up until verse 18 of chapter 15. And then he gives them really words of hatred.

He tells them of the hatred. He's told them of his love. And now he's telling them of the world's hatred toward them. And the Lord is doing a number of things. He's crushing their hope of political domination, which many of them desired.

Wouldn't it be nice if he just had the upper hand in everything? But God has a different plan, and he sends his son to set prisoners free from their captivity and to make them ones who sing in the shadow of his wings. And that's what we find here. So the first issue we encounter here in this chapter is a warning, and Jesus opens up this subject as I said before in chapter 15 verse 18, and He's continuing this. You know, the chapter breaks don't really make sense in many places in the Bible.

Well, this one, it really doesn't make sense because Jesus has been talking about the hatred of the world that they will experience, but he begins with these words, these things I have spoken to you that you should not be made to stumble. Now, when the Lord Jesus says, these things I have spoken to you, he's identifying a critical matter that he's trying to communicate to them. You remember earlier he said, these things I have spoken to you that your joy may be made full. And now He says, these things I have spoken to you that you will not be made to stumble. There are things that are going to happen to them that could make them stumble.

There are things that happen in this life that can make you stumble. And Jesus is giving them a warning. In some ways he's holding up a warning sign like you see on the roads, you know, curve ahead, yield, stop, merging traffic, deer, pedestrians, you know, all kinds of signs to warn you of what is up ahead. And that's exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ is doing here. And he uses this interesting word, scandalon, which means stumble, but it speaks of shock and anger and a Violent response that that makes you stumble there things that happen There are jarring things in life that happen that can make you stumble and Jesus is warning his disciples About that people can do things that will make you stumble Hardships can come upon you that can make you stumble disappointments You can even cause your brother to stumble as the Bible tells us and so the Lord Jesus wants his disciples not to be alarmed when this takes place and not to stumble, but to be expectant of the troubles of this world.

If you're expecting them, then you can say, oh, there it is, and it's not so jarring. It's not so surprising. We should not be surprised by these things. Matthew Henry stated it beautifully. He said the disciples are now forewarned and are now forearmed.

Forewarned and forearmed. That's what Jesus is doing with his disciples. He's been pouring out words of love to them just to fortify their souls to give them a sense of the greatness of his mercy toward them and how he loves their souls and how he is going to care for them and and now he's caring for them in a different way by warning them they are Forewarned and now for armed and this is what God does with this people The Word of God is meant to forewarn you and forearm you. It should arm you. It should make us stronger in the things that we face.

You know in Jude the final words in Jude are, Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with eternal joy." Now, this is what Jesus is doing. He is keeping them from stumbling by His instruction. Often we stumble because we haven't heeded His instruction in the past. Maybe I'll just say that again. We're often stumbling today because we didn't heed His warning in the past.

We're depressed today because we didn't heed his admonition in the past. And this often happens to us. But the Lord Jesus is so good, he is warning them that They might not stumble. So consider if you're stumbling today first of all, is it because you've ignored something God's already told you or maybe this is a good warning for the future of something that may happen in the future. And he continues to speak about this hatred of the world here in verse 2, they will put you out of the synagogues.

Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers service to God and these things they will do to you because they have not known my father they will be thrown out of the synagogues this is what Matthew Henry calls ecclesiastical censure. This is excommunication. And this is nothing new. Cain was a persecutor. Esau was a persecutor.

There were various persecutors of Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah. All the Apostles were persecuted. All of them were martyred except one of them, the Apostle John who writes this testimony here. They obeyed the Lord in their generation. They were holy men and therefore hated men.

Holy men are usually hated men. Be a holy man, be a holy woman. Don't be afraid of the censure of the world because you've turned away from worldly things. We see this illustrated all over the book of Acts We've read about that already in Acts chapter 26 The Apostle Paul speaks of what he did. He was one of the persecutors of the church Acts 26 verse 10 this I also did in Jerusalem and many of the saints I shut up in prison Having received authority from the chief priests and when they were put to death I cast my vote against them and I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme and being exceedingly enraged against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities." He was chasing the saints around.

He says in Galatians 1, 13, You've heard of my former conduct in Judaism how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it The world will always be trying to destroy the church, and we should expect that. That's why there's so many stories of the martyrs. Read the stories of the martyrs. You know, one of our girls wrote a story of Perpetua, who was one of the early martyrs of the early church. And we could talk about, you know, various martyrs throughout the ages.

The problem is that the people who have the Spirit of God are not comfortable with idolatry. They're not comfortable with immorality. They're not comfortable with rebellion against God's authority, and so they speak up. And that's why James says, you know true religion is to keep yourself unspotted from the world and That's the problem with Christians and as a result they will receive difficulty Christians have a completely different guidance system a completely different moral compass, a completely different set of priorities, a completely different use of time, a completely different set of interests. Christians are different And if you're going to be a Christian, you're going to be weird enough to be hated.

So take it on. The world will hate you and they will cast you out of their synagogues. And There are many, many places that we could go to speak about this in the Word of God. But notice this, that these are persecuted because the persecutors believe that they are offering service to God. In other words, it's genuine.

The persecution comes honestly from those who persecute. This is why Muslims kill Christians and others who are not Christians. This is where we get our word martyri on, witness, the martyr. These things they will do to you because they have not known my father or me. So this is the reason.

They believe they're offering service to God and they haven't really known God because they are really as the Bible describes them enemies of God, alienated from God, not subject to the law of God, they walk in the flesh." So there's a reason and it's a rational reason so we shouldn't be disturbed about it. And then he gives the...he further speaks of the reason for the warning in verse 4. Look at verse 4. "'But these things I have told you, that when the time comes you may remember that I told you of them. These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.'" So he is speaking his word to assist them to go through what they're going to go through and this is one of the great and precious values of the Word of God.

We are assisted to face everything we will ever face by the Word of God. There's one who knows the future and there is one who controls the future and there is one who ordains everything and he's the one who has told you how to get through your future and God ordains everything and what God ordains is always for his glory now If a person does not know deep within his heart that everything you experience has come from the hand of God. Your feelings will always be out of control, your words will be out of control, your relationships will be out of control because you're just bouncing off the walls of what's happening rather than being steadied and assisted by the warning system that God has given in His Word. When things happen to you, God tells you what to do like he does here. When emotions arise in you, God tells you how to deal with your emotions.

He tells you how to dissect your sinful and unprofitable emotions and how to deal with those emotions that take place. You're not a victim and God has through his son here before his disciples is assisting his disciples so that they will not stumble when all these things happen. The difficult things that happen are just confirmation that God is in control. They are verifications, not condemnations, of what God is doing in the world. They should cause consolation in our lives, but not the dislocation that they often cause.

And Jesus is assisting his disciples so that when these things happen, they'll remember, they'll say, oh, there it is. There it is. And what do you find them doing? Singing in prison. That's what they do.

What a blessing. They're free. Set free from the bondage of their own emotions and feelings and their reputations. Set free to serve God and to serve God alone. You know, there's much we could say about how to respond to this kind of persecution.

Open your Bibles to Romans 12. Just very quickly, These difficult things will happen, but how we happen to be matters quite a bit. And the apostle Paul speaks to the Roman church who is experiencing tremendous persecution. In Romans 12-14, he says, bless those who persecute you bless and do not curse That's how we respond now God doesn't give us wrong pictures He doesn't he doesn't paint fake pictures for us. He he he doesn't he tells us the truth about what's going to happen.

And sometimes those are hard truths. And what he's saying is that real Christianity will cause real losses in your life. Fake Christianity doesn't cause much loss, but real Christianity causes loss. And he's making that very clear. Shallow, careless, casual, borderline Christianity will get you a long way in this world.

But it will cause you to be persecuted if you have serious and careful Christianity. By the way, you don't pass on careless Christianity to the next generation. You pass on true Christianity when it's real. And, but the Lord Jesus is warning them, and he's telling them here in the Apostle Paul to bless those who persecute him. So, you know, it's just as wrong to be angry with somebody who has dementia as it is to be angry to somebody who's persecuting you because they're blind, because they are doing what they think they ought to do.

And the God of this world has blinded their eyes. And so in the same way that an Alzheimer's patient or someone else who has been hurt by some overcoming disease, We're not, it's not right to be angry with them because they do not know what they do. Jesus tells the crowd at the Sermon on the Mount how to deal with enemies. He says, but I say to you love your enemies bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and Persecute you and then soon really in just a few hours the disciples whoever whichever ones are still there at the cross they will hear the Lord Jesus Christ say father forgive them well you know the rest of the sentence, for they know not what they do. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

We see this happening in the book of Acts as well with Stephen, that great deacon in Jerusalem, he learned this lesson from Jesus. And when he was being stoned, he cried out, Lord, do not charge them with this sin. And with that, he died. Well, this is how we treat persecutors so the Lord Jesus is Dealing with this. He's acknowledging their sorrow He says These things I have said because sorrow has filled your heart.

That's verse 6 And then but he says a strange thing he says none of you asks me where are you going? But you know that earlier in the gospel of John that subject did come up Simon Peter asked this question in chapter 13, verse 36, then Thomas asked again in 14.5, what's the...why? Is this a contradiction of scripture? My understanding of this is that what Jesus is saying is that they have not searched out the matter. They have not asked specifically.

He's made a general statement, but they didn't follow it up. That's what he means by that. It must mean that. And the result is that sorrow has filled their heart. But he's speaking to them that their joy might be made full.

That's in chapter 15 verse 11. And then after dealing with this warning of rejection and persecution, the Lord Jesus instructs them on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Well, you will remember quite likely if you were here that when we started our studies in the Upper Room Discourse, I said, we're going to get an advanced degree in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. So here we are again. You've seen it.

The Lord Jesus keeps looping back to this subject of the person and the work of the Holy Spirit and He is Jesus is saying that it is to their advantage It's to their advantage that he goes away and he itemizes the advantages and I'm gonna point out four of the advantages that Jesus identifies here in these verses and to Specify from these verses for particular Works of the Holy Spirit. It's very important that we understand what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit. Charismania has so mangled the whole doctrine of the Holy Spirit that most people are cross-eyed when you actually tell them what the Bible says about it. And so in verse 7, he begins this disclosure, 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 depart, I will send him to you." It is to their quote unquote advantage.

They will be better off without him in the world than with the Holy Spirit with them in the world. And he begins to speak about this matter of the Holy Spirit. You might wonder why the Lord Jesus didn't pour out his spirit earlier. Why is it that in the Old Testament there's a different kind of ministry of the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit was very active all over the Old Testament.

We need to be very careful about that, but there is a new power of the indwelling Holy Spirit that is given, and He is the helper. Now, there are aspects of the ministry of the Holy Spirit that we could focus on. I'm not going to focus much on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We've done that a bit already, but I want to focus on a different matter of the Holy Spirit that's spoken of here. He is the helper and he and what does he help you with let's be very clear he helps you to know the truth and to speak the truth that's the primary function of the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit is not a force that works with you or upon you.

He is the voice of truth speaking to you. We've got to get that straight and that voice will always be consistent with the Word of God. When the Holy Spirit is speaking, He is always speaking the truth. The function of the Holy Spirit is not to show you whether to wear a green shirt or a blue shirt or whether to move to Chicago or Miami. Don't cry out to the Holy Spirit for that.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. There may be particular circumstances and Matters of wisdom that are biblical that might lead you to move to Chicago or Miami But the primary ministry of the Holy Spirit is not for that. It's to speak the truth To you so when the Holy Spirit speaks he speaks truth many people think that they have heard the Holy Spirit and it worked out really well but those same people, I being included, have thought I was being led by the Spirit to do something and it wasn't the Spirit. It was something else. It might have been my own selfishness, might have been something else.

But the role of the Holy Spirit is identified here and the role of the Spirit here in this text is to convict the world. The primary word is to convict and for what? Of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Why? To bring sinners to the knowledge of the power of the resurrection.

This is what happened in the Philippian jail. That jailer was brought to a sense of the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and he cried out and he said, what must I do to be saved? And This means that the power of the Holy Spirit in this context is to reveal man's need for God and the saving grace of Jesus Christ. In other words, to reveal man's condition and the solution to man's condition. So the Holy Spirit will convict the world and he will be convicting the world of its rebellion And this is why it is better for the Holy Spirit to go.

Now, or for Jesus to go so that he'll send the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is going to witness to the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and Jesus must go to the Father before the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his ascension and his seated being seated at the right hand of God. Jesus must go so that these things take place and so that the power is of God is poured out. Now he does this through conviction and it's a word that has a range of meanings. It's a legal term.

It speaks of a scene in a courtroom, if you ever have been in one, where an indictment has been issued and there's a prosecution. But the word really speaks of sort of the end of the trial of the final condemnation and the Holy Spirit will condemn men to death and they will know they were being condemned to death and they will either turn to Jesus Christ or they will remain in their state of condemnation. But the Holy Spirit is meant to convict. The Holy Spirit is not necessarily to make you feel bad about your sin, but to convict you, to actually let the gavel down and to declare a reality of your status before God. And There are many illustrations of how this word convict is used in the Bible.

In Luke 3 19 we read of John the Baptist engaged in this conviction, this prosecution when he rebuked, he convicted, rebuked, prosecuted Herod the Tetrarch because of the evils, the immorality that he had been practicing. In 1st Timothy 5 20, when an elder falls into sin there's a judgment that is passed. Those who are sinning rebuke, it's that same word convict, to rebuke, to say this is something that happened. This sin is resident in this man's life and you rebuke in the presence of all that the rest may fear. In other words, there's evidence and then there's a judgment that's passed down.

In James 2, verse 8, We learn that we are convicted by the law of as transgressors in John 8 verse 46 Jesus acts asks the religious leaders which of you convicts me of sin because that's exactly what they were doing. They were bringing down a gavel. In Revelation 3 19 Jesus says that He convicts those He loves. As many as I love I convict or I rebuke and chasten therefore be zealous and repent. The Apostle Paul when he's instructing the Corinthian church about the use of the gifts of the Spirit in the church, he's speaking of prophecy, which I believe is preaching, and he says that in the preaching he is convicted by all and The secrets of his heart are revealed and so falling down on his face He will worship God to report that God is truly among you.

I heard one pastor say, preachers are prosecutors. The preaching of the Word of God should prosecute. It should lay down a conviction so that under that conviction there's repentance and turning. Now there are various matters of conviction. The first thing that Jesus speaks of is the conviction of sin.

He came to convict the world of sin. And the world is wrong about sin. We don't think rightly about sin, and the Holy Spirit, by the Word of God, is sent to help us think rightly about sin I believe this is the the sin of separation from God and the unbeliever is in need of This work to declare to them that their sin has separated them from God Now I don't believe that the primary meaning of this is that he makes people feel bad about their sins. Humanity is afflicted with two things. Sin, that's original sin, that runs through everything, and sins.

Those are two different things. And the natural conscience is always working on the big ticket items of sins. Sins like murder and adultery and theft, everybody knows that are wrong. Do you need the Holy Spirit to tell you that that's wrong? The world knows that's wrong.

Now, perhaps it is the work of the Holy Spirit that makes it very clear that those things are wrong. But the Spirit of God takes a person to the heart of the depth of his sin, of his sinfulness, of his internal pollution, of his hopelessness before God, and this is the depths of original sin. The Holy Spirit will help a sinner to see that his sin has separated him from God. Well, that's the problem. Unbelievers are stuck in their sin.

Just stuck. And there are different words that the Bible uses, dead. A couple of weeks ago I was reading Hosea and I was struck by what image the prophet brought about. Hosea speaks of a scene, and it's a scene of a woman in childbirth, and she's languishing and in pain, and the baby is stuck. And it's a very dramatic scene.

And so, Hosea is admonishing, saying he should not stay long where children are born. In other words, this is a child who refuses to be born. This is the reluctant, vacillating sinner who refuses to be born, who Continues to resist the voice of the Holy Spirit and as a result is condemned Stuck stuck in the birth canal and Finally in in Hosea 13 the mother's strength runs out and the baby dies and the mother dies a very riveting graphic image of a person not responding to the conviction of the Holy Spirit that they are separated from God by their sin, by their original sin. And that's why Jesus says you must be born again. Don't find yourself stuck in the birth canal until it's too late.

And you will die there if you're not born again. And so Jesus says, you must be born again. You must be born again George would feel preach dozens of sermons on that text you must be born again and somebody said why do you always preach on this text? He said because you must be born again So not only does the Holy Spirit convict of sin, there's more. The second thing the Spirit will do is to convict the world of righteousness.

Convict the world of righteousness. This is Christ's personal righteousness in contrast to man's unrighteousness. The Holy Spirit will convict a person that they need a righteousness not of their own, that being a good person will send you to hell. Being a good person does not save. And so the Spirit will reveal through the Word of God that your righteousness is not enough.

This is the problem on the streets in North Carolina. Everyone feels they're so righteous And if you ask them if they know why they're saved, they almost all say, because I'm not that bad of a person. It's just ridiculously legendary. You can count on that answer Well my good outweighs my bad That's a person who needs the conviction of the Holy Spirit That person knows that there are some good things and bad things, that they're doing good things and bad things, that's not really the issue. The issue is that they are eternally separated from God as a result of indwelling sin.

That's a bigger problem than sins. And they might be very nice people, but the truth is they have a righteousness of their own. The apostle Paul spoke to this in Romans chapter 10. He said, they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. To everyone who believes.

It's the righteousness of Jesus Christ that saves. Our unrighteousness is so deep, It is so profoundly interconnected with everything that we are and everything that we do that it cannot be wiped out by being a good boy. The third thing the Spirit will do is convict of judgment. The Holy Spirit will make people aware that a verdict has been handed down, And it has been handed down to the devil the devil's gig is over because Jesus Christ is Lord and every knee shall bow The devil Will be thrown down The serpent's head will be crushed and the power of death will be destroyed All summed up in the final judgment The Holy Spirit is sent The Holy Spirit is sent to convict the world that the devil's days are over, that the devil is an imposter, that he's an abuser of the soul, that he ruins everything he touches. And when you come to that realization, then you can be saved.

And The Lord Jesus is telling them what the Spirit will do. It's very important that we understand what the Spirit does in the world. It's not just all about you. It's really primarily about glorifying Jesus Christ and drawing sinners to himself. The Holy Spirit is not somebody's personal rabbit foot, rabbit's foot, to give what they want.

The Holy Spirit has been sent to convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment so that they would be delivered from the bondage of the devil. What a blessing that is. The Lord Jesus Christ is encouraging his disciples, even though He's saying they will be persecuted and hated and cast out of the synagogues. He's telling them at the same time that He is the one who's going to come and do the work in the world for them by His Holy Spirit. He's going to use them as a mouthpiece as they speak the Word of God.

The world will be convicted of sin and righteousness and judgment. It's the Word of God that will do the conviction. He's telling them that He is giving them His Spirit of truth so that that can be accomplished in the world. He's actually telling them this is how the work will be done. It will be done by the Word of God through the Spirit of God.

And so he's comforting with all these things. Why? So that there would be millions before the throne of God worshiping God, happy for all eternity, because their sins were forgiven. They were delivered from the bondage of Pharaoh. They were delivered from sin and they escaped the wrath of God and and they had a righteousness not of their own and they could Worship God forever because Jesus Christ is their righteousness Jesus Christ was punished for their sin and That's what we get to experience today the relief of knowing that Jesus Christ has already punished sin and unrighteousness and he has already punished the work of the devil.

He has disarmed the principalities in your life And he set you free from the law of sin and death and that's why we can so rejoice The gatherings of the church are really gatherings of prisoners that have broke out of prison You know, I've been thinking about that all morning ever since somebody in our church sent me something, I'll read it to you. He's...it's really about singing, but it's about prisoners broke out of prison singing. Far better than the sweet harmonies of a few trained singers is the rough and hale sound of pardoned criminals, delighting with one voice in their Savior. The most beautiful instrument in any Christian service is the sound of a congregation singing. Well, I can't wait to sing at the end of this service.

Prisoners set free from the law of sin and death, from sin, from unrighteousness, from condemnation. That's what the Holy Spirit has come to do. Praise God for that, what He has done. And then a second work of the Holy Spirit is to write the New Testament through the Apostles. That's verses 12 and 13.

When he, the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will tell you things to come the Holy Spirit will speak what will he speak he will speak the truth He will speak objective truth He will speak the truth about sin and righteousness and judgment and everything else This is a prophecy of the Apostles writing Scripture. Jesus is authenticating the Apostles to write the Word of God, and He will bring things to their minds. The church has one book, it's the Bible. You know, one of our guys was sharing with someone who was out, these people were out in one of the big box stores, walking around with a camera, taking pictures of themselves healing people, having healings.

Well they were fake healings, they weren't real healings. But one of the things that these people told him is you need to you need to Focus more on your relationship with Jesus and less on the Bible. Less on the Bible. The Spirit of truth? Less on the Spirit of truth?

Less on the Holy...the Word of the Holy Spirit? I don't think so. The Bible is spoken of as the finger of God. It's spoken of as a fire, as a hammer, as a water, and as light. And Jesus is telling His apostles that they are going to write the New Testament.

Praise God for the New Testament. Aren't you thankful for the New Testament? It brings so much to light. All of its...the history and the theology of the Old Testament is clarified like nothing else. It's just so clear.

And while the Holy Spirit is prosecuting prisoners, He's also working to write the New Testament. And that's why Peter says no prophecy of Scripture is a private interpretation. It's of the interpretation of God. Jesus Christ, through His Spirit, is going to reveal to them what to write, and out comes the New Testament. Again, there's much we could say about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit in the heart, particularly matters of what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit, which is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.

These are results of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But Jesus here is speaking of other things. He's speaking of revelation and how the Bible have the New Testament part of the Bible will be written but then when we come to verse 14 we come to what I want to suggest is the most important statement about the Holy Spirit in the entire Bible. The most important statement about the Holy Spirit in the entire Bible because this sort of dials it down into a summary, a very short summary statement. He will glorify me.

He will glorify me. This is what the Holy Spirit does. He will take of what is mine and declare it to you. The Holy Spirit will glorify Jesus Christ by convicting the world of sin and of righteousness and judgment. And that spirit's role cannot be experienced in full until the death and the resurrection and the Ascension and the seating of the Son of God at the Father's right hand So the Holy Spirit is not poured out because the proclamation of the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the saving message For the New Testament era and Jesus must go to heaven Having been raised from the dead before the power of the resurrection can even be talked about and known in people's hearts and so that's why the Holy Spirit was not poured out before Jesus Christ had to suffer and die and be resurrected in order to pour out the Spirit in the way that God designed it in this way.

So the power of the Holy Spirit is not a power of self for self-interest but it's to glorify Jesus Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit is nothing like the relief you might get from good news. It's nothing like the refreshment you feel from exercise or what somebody might feel from yoga or from taking some kind of medication or positive thinking. The role of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Jesus Christ. And by the way, that glorification of Jesus Christ is manifested in different ways Ezekiel speaks of this in Ezekiel 36 verse 27 He really speaks of of what this looks like.

I will I will put my spirit within you He's prophesying of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes And you will keep my judgments and do them This is one of the most visible and compelling Proofs of the Holy Spirit people obey Remember what Jesus said in chapter 15 if you love me keep my commandments and And I will send my spirit the helper The helper is designed For you to learn how to obey Not necessarily to feel something but to obey the Lord Jesus Christ. This is his primary function in the life of a believer is to help believers obey. And then finally the fourth work of the Holy Spirit, verse 15. He'll reveal the Father to us.

He will reveal the Father. You know, if you're a Christian, you have such a kind Father, You have such a mighty Father, such a wise Father, and He will reveal the Father to you. All things that the Father has are mine, therefore I said that He will take of mine and declare it to you. The Father declares to the Son, the Son declares to the Spirit, and the Spirit declares the truth to the believer. That's the chain of logic in verse 15.

He will glorify the Father. Theologians have called this divine simplicity. In other words, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are three separate persons, but they have one will. They have the same message. They all speak the truth, the same truth in love.

The Holy Spirit will never tell you something that contradicts the Son that will never contradict anything the Father ever said. If you say you're being led by the Spirit, be very careful to recognize, is it contradicting anything the Father or the Son has ever said? People feel they receive all kinds of revelations from God, but unless they line up with those things they're not revelations from God. So the Lord Jesus Christ is engaging His disciples. He is comforting them in their afflictions.

He's warning them that there are things coming that can make them stumble just like there are things happening in our lives that can make us stumble and He's given us the Word of God to protect us from stumbling in the midst of the troubles that come upon us And He sends the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin and of righteousness and judgment, that it will be His work, not our own. Will just be the mouthpieces of the truth. We will speak the Word of God in the world, and that will convict of sin and righteousness and judgment. And when the Spirit of God speaks to us, He will always speak the comforts of the infallible, authoritative, sufficient Word of God. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth.

And if we're going to be a church filled with the Spirit, then we must be filled with the truth. And so I commend the truth to us that we would spend all the rest of the days of our lives filling our hearts and minds with truth so that the power of the Spirit of God would work through us. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for your word that is truth. We thank you for the manifold grace that is in Jesus Christ.

His comfort and sorrow, His warning is helping us to see the way things really are, not candy-coating anything, giving us reality and showing us how we might bear fruit in the world and also to show sinners how they might be delivered from the bondage of their prison and spend the rest of eternity singing with joy inexpressible