Sunday School | What Does The Holy Spirit Do?

Introduction

What's up Nate? Hey Nate, to answer your question you texted me or emailed me or what did you do? You voicemailed me yesterday. If you're starting to read the New Testament, my recommendation—this is y'all can listen out on this little private conversation I'm having with Nate—is I would always recommend folks begin Luke, Acts, Romans. Luke, Acts, Romans. It's a great place to start and then read another gospel, probably John, and then read a bunch of other stuff, and then another gospel, a bunch of other stuff, another gospel, and save Hebrews and Revelation to the end. That's the general pattern. If you do Luke, Acts, Romans, it gives you a really great foundation, and if you get through those, I'll give you the next block of stuff, but start with those three. Cool?

Alright you guys, we're in the middle of a doctrine class. The middle's generous. We were in the first 20% of a doctrine class walking through, we looked at theology proper, the doctrine of the first person of God, then we spent a bunch of time on Christology, the doctrine of the Son, and we finished that up a couple weeks ago. Just last week we began what? Spirit.

The Doctrines of the Holy Spirit

Spirit. What do we call that when we're trying to be fancy? New mythology. New mythology, is breath, is spirit, the doctrine of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ. And we spent last week basically talking about who is he, not what is he, but who is he? Because the first thing that he is is a person, right? The Holy Spirit is God, he's the third person of the Trinity, he's not an impersonal force. He has intellect, he has emotion, he has will, and then we left with a homework assignment.

Does anybody remember what your homework assignment was last Sunday? Which is an indicator of if you did it or not. Do you remember what the assignment was? Not so much the character, okay let's go, he's talking about who he is, characteristics is another good lens, but it was something other than that. Say it louder? What does he do, Brenda? Okay. What has he done? What does he do? And that's going to be kind of our framing of things for today.

The Holy Spirit's Functions

And I got a big long list, but I'm not sharing it yet. I want to hear some of you guys' things and then we'll try to come up with a coherent answer. So, if he is God, if he's been God from all eternity, if he proceeds from both the Father and the Son, and then if you're willing to accept it, if he is in fact the love of God that exists between the Father and the Son into which we have been invited, what does he do? He allows us to spread the gospel in very different ways, like based on Acts, he allows the apostles to speak in the languages of the people that want it.

Okay, good. That's great. Okay, so there's no way anybody that's from heard you accept me, so let me repeat that, okay? What Gillis saying is that the Holy Spirit's one of his roles is he has something to do with the spread of the gospel, and that is a fantastic answer, right? And instead, we'll get to this, we'll unpack this more, but I think it's extraordinary that Jesus has been discipling these 12 for like three years. We're down to 11. One of them had to like, you know, things went off the rails with one of them. But he's been discipling these, the apostles for three years, training them, bringing them out on ministry training times and equipping them in every way. He dies, he rises from the dead, and the 12 would reasonably think, okay, shall we go do what you've been training us to do? And what does Jesus say to them at that point? Wait. Wait. Just sit down. Stay right there.

They are as equipped as a human being can be. Three years, personal tutelage under Jesus. And he says, you're completely incompetent, stay where you are, right? Wait. For what? The Holy Spirit to come upon you. And then, and implication is only then, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. So yes, great answer. The Holy Spirit has something to do with equipping the saints for the proclamation of the gospel. Excellent. What else does he do? Yeah, Don.

The Holy Spirit Indwelling Believers

So in the Old Testament, when the New Covenant is described, it makes it sound like I don't have to carry the mark around with me anymore, something is going to be put in me. Yes. Okay. Very good. I believe that thing that's been put in me is the Holy Spirit. Yes. Christ in me is my hope for glory. Christ was the name used in that verse, but I think it's the Spirit. Yes. Yeah. There's no question. Don is right. So what does the Holy Spirit do? Well, according to Gil, what the Spirit does is he equips the saints for ministry just for the gospel. Don is pointing out, what does he do? He indwells believers. He lives inside Christians. He is the person of the Holy Trinity that comes to be in us. And that, by the way, is a little bit of a Trojan horse. There's a million things that come flooding out of that. But we're looking for the verbs of the Holy Spirit that he indwells Christians. Yes. Excellent. And we'll unpack that more too. Yes. What you got? He convicts us.

The Holy Spirit Convicts

Very good. Okay. So Jesus has this strange statement that he makes. He says, "When the Spirit comes, he will..." Do you remember the three things that it's... We might... This might be a class unto itself, but the three aspects of that conviction, according to Jesus in 16, maybe? It's in the upper room discourse. John, do you know where it is? Is it 16? 16, 8? Just listen, Judge. Yes. And when he comes, he will convict the world in regards to sin and righteousness and judgment, which you might be able to figure out what those three things are until Jesus explains it. And then you're like, "Well, wait. I don't know. We even know what you're talking about him." Okay. That would be worth maybe unpacking. But what the Holy Spirit does is he convicts us, right? So as we mentioned this recently in a heretical way, you might envision the Holy Spirit for just a brief moment as a little cricket named Jiminy, right? Because he is in some regard the activator of our conscience.

Let me say he convicts us. This might be important. When we say he convicts us, you don't mean he condemns us. You mean he provokes our conscience, right? And that's potentially misleading, right? Because conviction is, to prison with you, that is not what the Holy Spirit does. What he says is, "Doug, I mean, come on, man," right? It's a different thing. So he does. I'm going to let other folks play a go, and then maybe I'll come back around to you. Robin?

The Holy Spirit Reminds and Illuminates

He reminds us of God's Word. Excellent. Okay. We're going to try to put these all back in order. So where do you get that? What are you basing that on, Robin? I can't hold the scripture first, but I know that that's one of the functions. Okay. So I'll give you guys a hint. If you're trying to remember, where did you learn this about the Holy Spirit? You probably learned it between John 14 and John 16. This is so much stuff in there, and that is exactly where you're going to find that. So the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, "Listen, when you go, the Holy Spirit will remind you what to say," right? That he opens up the scriptures. He is, again, if we want to be fancy about it, we might say that he illumines the scriptures or lights up, illuminates the scriptures. That one of his primary roles in the life of believer is to make this Word not only comprehensible, but also memorable, right? He lights it up so we can see what it says and understand it, so massive function in our lives. Kelsu.

I just wanted to read the verse about that. This is John 16:12. I have much more to say to you more than you can now bear, but when he, the Spirit of Jesus comes, he will guide you in all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it into you. Does that sound Robin? That's it. Okay. Excellent. Lord Beth.

The Holy Spirit and the Incarnation

Jesus was conceived by the Lord. Okay. Very good. Every once in a while, on long intervals, he conceives babies without the help of a woman or without the help of a man rather, right? Right? So, yes, he is, that was a one-time function, but it is one of the things that he has done, and it was consequential. So excellent. Very, very good.

The Holy Spirit Guides and Convicts

He, Jesus makes us think about our actions before we act upon them. Okay. So, you said Jesus makes us think about our actions. Do you mean that the Spirit of Jesus, do you mean the Spirit of God? The Spirit of God makes us think about our actions before we act upon them and where we go from point eight to point. Okay. This is great. Now, let's take this in two different directions. Okay. So, on the one hand, that is consistent, Nate, with what we've already said that Jesus convicts us, now you got me doing it, okay, that the Spirit of God swoops in and is like, hey, yeah, no, stop. And you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, and we move this away, right? But it's not only regarding our sin, right? So the Spirit of God is also the guide and the director. And this is a little bit like what Don was talking about. You guys remember your new covenant in Ezekiel 36? In Ezekiel? In fact, let's look at this one. Maybe we should be looking at scripture for every one of these, that would be a bad idea.

Listen to this, Nate, it says down here in 24, anticipating the day that the Spirit will be given to all people:

I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I’ll sprinkle clean water on you. And you shall be cleaned from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you.

And here's the great line, verse 26:

I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And now, verse 27: I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Right? So he is the one who doesn't just enable us to understand the scriptures, Robin, but he enables us to obey it. He is the operating action or the things that we've demonstrated pretty richly are things we're not capable of doing absent his intervention. So huge.

Teaching Us How to Pray

Okay. Don? This is a parallel to the John 16 for the idea, but in Romans 8 we learn that he teaches us how to pray. Yes. Oh, this is very... Okay. So the spirit teaches us how to pray with groans that words cannot express, right? And not only may be as he teaching us, but perhaps he is actually directly praying for us. Right? Certainly the Son is interceding.

Oh, and this—maybe I should have said this maybe the beginning is whenever we try to play the game of okay, what is this person of the Godhead do? And what does that person of the Godhead do? It's really hard to be like, he and only he does this because you guys, whatever one of them does, they're all doing because then this is where anytime we talk about the Trinity, you're just heresy, okay? Because right now, at this moment, we are acting as if the Trinity is more three than one, but they're not more three than one. He is not more one than three, right? So there is a thainess. There is a he-ness to it. And right now, because we're too stupid to think about multiple things at once, we're talking just about the Holy Spirit, but what the Holy Spirit does, the Father does, and the Son does because they are one and yet they are three, right? You're just like, you just kind of phase through it and it's just kind of crazy. So yes, right, but so, of course, is involved in the Son of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit as Comforter and Helper

Susan, you had your hand a second ago. He stole it from you? That is so lame. You know, and he'd already been called on. I never should call him. Don't, you're done for the day, okay? You're out, okay. What else here? Give us a skip? Give us a skip. Okay, this was—Kelly and I talked about this last week—we made it through one point four sessions without talking about the Holy Spirit's gifts. Isn't that stunning? It didn't come up all at all last week, okay? Yeah, you weren't here, right? Okay, so what do you mean when you say that, Dan? His 1 Corinthians 12, the Holy Spirit gives gifts as he wills and they are both natural and supernatural. Yes. Human beings get the power of God flowing through us to accomplish the will of God. Excellent.

Give us name three, not supernatural gifts. But leadership, compassion, teaching. Great, okay. So what we mean by this is that we have abilities generally speaking, the characteristics of these gifts that come from the Spirit are that there's going to be something that you love to do, that you're good at, and that it blesses the body. It's not just like a personal, selfish thing, but like God gives us gifts. He gives Doug McQuaid gifts so that Doug not can just like relish the glory of that, but so that he can share it with others, right? You have some ability, you just, you have this incredible ability to administrate things and to keep things organized and so we're going to put you in charge of organizing things because it's beneficial to the world. Your nature, maybe not your nature, maybe your super nature, maybe this divine gift is that mercy flows out of you, you're a conduit of His mercy, and he gives particular—notice this—we're all different, you're great at something, also terrible at something else. Have you noticed this about yourself, right? And so there's different gifts for the body, and we're all given these gifts so we can impart them.

Give me three supernatural gifts, healing, prophecy, miracles. So it's not, there's these things that are relatively tame but that are incredibly blessed, you know, the giving credible benefit, but then there's also these things that we would sometimes call the supernatural gifts, sometimes we call it the charismatic gifts, the word charismatic just means gift, the gift gifts basically, the charisma, the grace, and the God intervenes. We see in the book of Acts, 27 out of 28 chapters in the book of Acts, something supernatural happens, surprising. It's a lot of weird stuff going on, okay? And the Holy Spirit every time the weird stuff's happening, it's attributable to the Holy Spirit who moves in the lives of his people to enable them to know things they couldn't otherwise know, to accomplish things they couldn't otherwise accomplish, and the Holy Spirit is implicated in every single one of these things, right? That's going to take a little bit more time as well.

The Holy Spirit as Comforter and Guide

He gives gifts. Excellent. Charlie Tall. When you first ask a question to me, I think the Holy Spirit can be fixed, but in my life I think so much how it comforts, right? So he is a counselor, he's a comforter, yeah.

What does that look like for a believer? When you think of places in Scripture where that's specifically spoken of, or you're thinking of just your own experience of life. Yeah, so in 2 Corinthians 1, the God of all, look at 2 Corinthians 1, Charlie, because I think this will land for you. I think the Holy Spirit is the agent behind this.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it's for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And I'm almost done. And our hope for you is firm because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

Okay, now in that passage, you may have heard explicitly that I mentioned the Father: praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then we hear also in verse 5 that the sufferings of Christ overflow, through Christ are comfort, overflows. And we have no mention of the Spirit. However, all that anyone does, they all do because they are one. And the agent whose job, remember, in the same way that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, that the Father has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, he is the, you're exactly, he is the conduit of that. If the Father seeks to impart to you, he imparts via the means of the Spirit. What the Son of God is doing in your life, he does through the means of the Spirit.

The Spirit is the conduit, bridge, messenger, conveyor of the blessings of God to us. He is the paraclete. Right? I mean, he is. Okay. Or look at this: First John, you talk about comfort, first John, there's a very specific thing that John is writing about that he's worried about, and that is that there's a lot of Christians who don't know that they really are in Him, that they really are in Him, Christians that don't know that they're safe. They don't know if they're saved. And so in kind of our evangelical circles, we talk about the assurance of salvation. And it just is pervasively what John is going to talk about.

And in First John, he's going to say, there's this line that is great. Hang on a second, oh shoot, where is it? What verse is this? Bear with me.

We know, we know, we know, we know. All these we know, yeah, here we go, is in 3:18. Dear children, let us not love with words or in tongue, but with actions and in truth. Now Charlie, verse 19, this then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence whenever our hearts condemn us. God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything.

If you've been a Christian for any length of time, you know exactly what it is to have your heart condemn you. You're like, I don't even know if I'm a Christian because this is so grossly inconsistent, and this is not the first time. Does that ring a bell for anybody? What John is saying, he's writing to people to say, no, no, no, no, no. Zoom out. Zoom out. Do you see the trend? Yeah, you blew it. He convicts us, noted. But he also reassures us that if we are His, we are in Him, there will be a chance. Charlie, hang on, calm down. Look, zoom out and he comforts us that, yeah, that you screwed that up. You are still in Him. You've depended on Him, and we have no plausible explanation for the rest of your life if that weren't true. And it comforts us. He sets our hearts at rest when our hearts condemn us. That is the Spirit of God's job.

The Assurance of Salvation

Catherine, the one that has helped me so much is if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God. Okay, that sounds very much like, that's the vocabulary of John. But I don't know exactly what that verse is. The one that I read to you, maybe that sounds— that's adjacent. What is it? Verse 21.

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God or receive from Him anything we ask because we obey His commands.

Yeah. So that is the one that I read is the setup for exactly what you're saying. Yeah. And then I tell you, one of the gifts that stands out to me is exhortation. Yes. And encouragement. Now, are they kind of the same thing? Well, okay, I think of exhortation as more of like telling you what to do, and encouragement is comforting you with your inability to do it, generally, right? That's correct. I'm on the exhortor and you're the comforter, right? And there again, the body is a unit made up of many parts, right? And though we are all called to follow Him in all that He is, there are certain things of like, "I'm better at than others," right, and the same thing for you.

The Role of the Holy Spirit in Morality and Guidance

What does the Holy Spirit do, Scott? It might be a little abstract, but our sense of morality. Yes. And this is, I would, yeah, that He is the one that, well, what do you mean? What about it? What is the overall feeling of what is more and right, just, and, I mean, you put all those emotions into one word. Yes. He is the Holy Spirit, there is no. Yeah. He's going to be the one who's going to convict us when we're wrong, he's going to tell us what to do. Paul is going to talk a great deal. Really Galatians is very strong on this, that He is the one who guides us, right? We are to keep in step with the Spirit. So it's like, you know, he is, these are the footprints. Walk here, walk here, walk here, and as we keep in step with Him, where any of you guys in like marching band in high school? Yeah, you know how to like, keep in step, right? This is, the Spirit is setting up, this is what we do, and we do it all.

Closing Remarks

Alright. A couple more. Gil. I wanted to ask a question about the... Ask it loud. I wanted to ask a question about the convicting. Is there a difference between, so can the Holy Spirit just feels like it's going to lead me to a heresy? Can the Holy Spirit convict a non-believer the same way he can convict a believer? Great.

If you're indwelled by the Holy Spirit, surely you would have to feel a different kind of conviction than someone who would laugh at the... This is an excellent question. So Gil is saying, does he convict non-Christians in the same way that he convicts Christians?

So let's ask a prior question first. Does he convict non-Christians at all? What do you think? Yes? All of us. He better. I wanted to say... Right. What you said earlier about it, if one does it all three, they all do it because Jesus, like God and Jesus, convict the whole world through the extension of the Holy Spirit. Yes. Absolutely. So the conviction of the Holy Spirit, there's two things. They are—I think you do well to draw a distinction between them because he speaks to the lives of believers, right? We need this, ongoingly, like we're still sinners and we still need to be drawn back into his grace. We still need to be drawn back into obedience. But you guys, if today, right now, you are a Christian, you go ahead and write a thank you note to the Holy Spirit because he's the reason that you are in him. You are born of the Spirit, right? The Spirit, when Jesus is John 3, says the Spirit blows, the wind blows where it will, right? He's like Nicodemus, you know, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven unless you're born again. And he's like, what does that mean? He's like, you got to be born of the Spirit, right? And just in the same way that you didn't have a lot to do with your first birth, you don't have a lot to do with your second birth either. It is a function of the Spirit of God who will, maybe for the first time or for the first meaningful time, awaken you to your dependence upon him, your need for him. So he does this to the unbelieving world, drawing us to faith, and then continues to do it ongoingly. Now, there might be a little side avenue. What about people who haven't come to faith and don't ever? Is he the conscience of the unbelieving world as well? What do you guys think about that? Judy? I can't think that he would because he is the deposit in the priesthood to be when Jesus left. He sent us the Holy Spirit. Yeah. So a couple of things. He's indwelling. Yes. And because Jesus left, we received the Holy Spirit. And so that's one of the primary things he does is indwell believers and it's a deposit of your future, so, you know, redemption, I guess. Yeah. So to me, if that's what it is, I don't see how the Holy Spirit could actually convict a non-believer who can't believe it. Okay. This spirit. Unless the Spirit comes upon him as they did in the Old Testament. Okay. Fun. This is good. Okay. So Judy is saying, well, Judy is saying, I don't think it's the case that the Holy Spirit indwells non-believers and if he does his work via indwelling, it's going to be a minute. If he does his work via indwelling, then maybe he doesn't do that to other people because he doesn't indwell other people. And I think your logic is great is absolutely the case that he indwells believers and believers only. I don't think that it is only the case that he does his work through his indwelling presence. And so I think the Holy Spirit is absolutely effective. He's unlimited. He can do whatever he wants to do. He's God. He's sovereign. He's omnipotent. He's omnipresent. He's, you know, all of those things. And he, I think one of our great hope, when we pray that terrible things in the world won't happen, I think the Holy Spirit is the agent that accomplishes that as well to restrain sin. He is the one, in fact, you go to 2 Thessalonians and it talks about the restraining that he will get rid of the one who is restraining sin. The Spirit is that restraining agent, not just on Christians, but on non-Christians as well. There's a brief answer to that. Well, where it is, common grace. Yeah. That's what I mean. It's like the, not just the blessings but the restraining... Yeah. Although it's a blessing to restrain sin, right? So he is, so he is acting upon all of us. There are people who, you know, non-Christians who are going to cheat on their wives, but don't, right? And I think that is the Spirit of God, like, constraining our sin, you know? That's good. Okay. Now, as always, we're getting close. A couple more. If you haven't had a chance to speak, I'm going to prioritize people who haven't spoken yet this morning. And then I'm going to try to give you a comprehensive summary, a little bit more scripture. A couple more. Yeah. Brenda? Well, I always think of the Holy Spirit as working in the lives of believers, but I look in the Old Testament and I think sometimes you see the Holy Spirit bringing about God's will. And when it talks about Pharaoh's heart being hardened, you know, and you see how God uses evil rulers or people to bring about his will, is that the world? Yes. Yes. I would say as a default, what God is seeking to accomplish in the world is the Spirit is his agent acting upon people. That's correct.

Taylor, I missed you. Okay. You kind of touched on it. I was going to rebuttal what she said of just like, I think that humans are maybe subtly depraved, but I don't think that we can make a good decision without knowing what goodness is. And so I think there are non-Christians that make good decisions all the time that have some kind of morality, and I've just, to me, attribute that. You should the Spirit's doing it. Yeah. I think the Spirit is working on the lives of unbelievers. Yeah. What does he do? He's also thinking about like, in Psalms it says, the heavens declare you are God kind of a general revelation. So there's still people out there who just by the beauty of nature know to save the whales. That's true. That's true. Like, right. So the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim, you know, that there is information about him that's available to everyone. And then our hearts get darkened, and as those hearts get opened, we're able to do better things. But it is not my position. I do believe in a doctrine called total depravity, but it doesn't follow from depravity that everyone at every moment is doing as much wickedness as they can every second, clearly not. Right. And people can save the whales. We like the whales. All right. And that's a good thing to love creation and do so, even if you don't understand the God who made them. I think that's true. Okay. All right. PJ. So I was thinking during this conversation about the Book of Esther and how God has never mentioned, but just the way everything is created to happen is a testament to the Holy Spirit. Yes. Right. So in the Bible, it's one of the 66. God has never mentioned a single time in that whole book. And yet my goodness does he pervade it all. Right. It's a great book about the providential outworking of God. And I'm a hundred percent agreement with you. The Spirit is accomplishing all these things through seemingly natural means. And through believers and nonbelievers. That's right. Right. Because here's the thing. Whatever. Now, take all this whole list. Okay. First Joe, and then I'll give you my capper. Joe. In regard to the Spirit of working through us, and then it's not as one of the biggest problems is us getting our events out of the way. The Spirit wants to flow, he wants to mingle with other people through us. Yes. Right. So everything we just said, the Spirit does this, he does this, he does this, he does this, he does this, he does this. Do you realize where does the Holy Spirit live in the lives of believers? So if the Spirit is the agent that accomplishes the work of the Father, do you know who the agent is that actually enacts the work of the Spirit? It is you.

Now he may sometimes leapfrog us on the way to something, but overwhelmingly what gets accomplished in the world, he accomplishes through image bearers who are indwelled by his Spirit. You might know one or two things that a human being did not say or write. Do you understand this? Like the Holy Spirit is the one who illumines your heart to understand his scriptures through the agency of authors and teachers. That's how it works. You might experience the comfort of God directly, but it's overwhelmingly likely that you're experiencing the comfort of God through a human being with skin on, right? God might be providing for you because in gold to grow in your garden, but it is overwhelmingly likely that God is providing for you through the generosity of a human being who wrote a check, right? Whatever he is doing in the world he's doing through the agency with people.

Here's a list and then we've got to be done. Here's some stuff that he does. What does he do? He gives life. That was his in the first place.

Job 34:14 — If it were his intention and he withdrew his spirit and breath, all humanity would perish together and mankind would return to the dust.

Makes you alive.

Psalm 104:30 — When you send your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.

He's the author of Scripture. We talked about how he illumined Scripture, but you know he's the author. Listen to this, 2 Peter 1:19 —

We have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophets' own interpretation. This is the tidiest description of how Scripture is written, verse 21.

For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

He's behind the Scripture. He convicts us. We've hit this, John 16, unless I go away the counselor, I won't come to you. But if I go, I'll send him. When he comes, he will convict the world of sin, of guilt, in regard to sin and righteousness, judgment.

He reveals the gospel to us. I'm telling you, you were born of the Spirit. Listen to this. We speak of God's secret. This is 1 Corinthians. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden. That God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written,

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

That way, just on the side, people imagine that that verse, no eye is seen, no ear is heard, is talking about heaven being better than you can imagine. Nothing to do with that. It's the cross. The thing that nobody's ever dreamed of is not heaven there. It is the cross. And in verse 10, the Spirit of God revealed it to us.

As he does all the scriptures, John 14:26 —

But the advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

And also, in John 16:13 —

When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He won't speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what has yet to come.

When we missed, this is a good one that we missed, the Spirit glorifies Christ. He loves this job. It is his pleasure and his delight to shine a light on the beauty of the Sun. John 16:14 —

He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.

He indwells, he empowers, and he directs believers. That's going to get a lot more time. John, Ezekiel 36:24, I've already read to you.

He assures us, Romans 8:16 —

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

And then finally, I will just leave you with, if you want to go dig deeper on this, John 14 to 16 would be a great place to have a couple of quiet times this week. John 14 to 16, he's Jesus, really in a pretty meaningful way, he's passing the baton to the Spirit. He has come to accomplish our salvation and he's about to and then he's going to jet and he's preparing the disciples. Okay, when I leave, he is coming. Get ready. That's a hugely important passage if you want to understand what the Holy Spirit does, John 14 to 16.

Conclusion

Thanks for coming.