Thank you for listening to our Emanuel Baptist Church podcast sermon series by Pastor Sean Cole. Emanuel exists to display God's glory, declare God's gospel, and to disciple for God's great commission. If you have any questions about this message or would like more information about our church, you can visit our website at www.ebc-online.org. Now here's Pastor Sean. I invite you to open your Bibles to 1 John chapter 4 and yes our dear brother Verne Borth passed away and his service will be this Saturday at 11 a.m. here at Emanuel. Verne did a lot of things in the life of our church. He's been in the nursing home the past few years but he used to be our head usher. You would remember him standing up there in the balcony counting everybody. He also did a ministry out at the Logan County Jail for many years, and so definitely a long time faithful member of Emanuel Baptist Church. 1 John chapter four. We believe in the Holy Spirit. The Lord and giver of life who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is to be worshipped and glorified. We believe in the Holy Spirit. The Lord and giver of life who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is to be worshipped and glorified. These are words from the Nicene Creed. Do you agree with these words about the Holy Spirit? He's the giver of life. He is to be worshiped and glorified along with the Father and the Son. To deny the Nicene Creed puts you into very perilous waters to where you may end up following false doctrine. Because the Nicene Creed was articulated, was put together in response to a heretic, a false teacher, a man named Arius. Arius in the 300s was a pastor from Alexandria, Egypt. And Arius taught that Jesus was not eternal, that Jesus was created by God, that Jesus is a creation. He's a good person, he's a strong man, he is God-like, but he is not God in the flesh. And so there were some councils that came together to deal with this heresy. The Council of Nicaea, AD 325, and the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. and in the first edition of the Nicene Creed. In 325, there was no mention of the Holy Spirit, it was just the Father and the Son. But they wanted to formulate a full-blown doctrine of the Trinity, and after much reflection, in 381, we have the final version of the Nicene Creed that speaks about the Holy Spirit being fully divine, to be worshipped equal with the Father and the Son. And the Nicene Creed helps us to understand the Trinity. and all the beneficial ways that each person of the Trinity helps us, Father, Son, Spirit. And in the Nicene Creed and the doctrine of the Trinity is not just good theological information for us to know, but it actually gives us assurance in our hearts that all three persons of the Trinity are working together for our salvation. And last week we focused on the doctrine of the Trinity. We saw that the Father does a very particular thing. The Father has chosen us before the foundation of the world to be saved. The Father has chosen us. The Son, the only begotten Son, Jesus, died on the cross in our place that we might have life through Him. He was the propitiation for our sins. He took God's justice on the cross. And then we talked about the Holy Spirit, how the Holy Spirit lives in us. and gives us that assurance of salvation. And you know, these three bedrock truths are what define eternal security. Because the Father has chosen you, because Jesus died for you, and because the Holy Spirit lives in you, as a believer you will never fully nor finally fall away from the faith, but you will endure to the end, because all three persons of the Trinity are instrumental in your growth as a Christian. But we don't often talk about the Holy Spirit, do we? Know a lot about the Father, know a lot about the Son, and sometimes in Baptist churches we're afraid to talk about what the Holy Spirit doesn't do that we don't spend time talking about what He does do. But the Holy Spirit is indispensable to your Christian life. In other words, you cannot live without the Holy Spirit. So what is the role of the Holy Spirit? Who is the Holy Spirit? What does He do in your life? So as we read this passage of Scripture, we're going to see the work of the Holy Spirit. How He has worked in us from even before we were saved all the way up until when Jesus Christ comes back and everything in between. So this morning's message is about the Holy Spirit. And I'm gonna go slow this morning because we don't often talk about the Holy Spirit. But I think it's vital to your Christian life to know the person and work of the spirit of the living God. And we're gonna look at it directly from this passage of scripture, so I'm gonna be giving you a lot of information this morning. But in the proverbial words of the famous movie, you can handle the truth. I can't handle the truth, you can handle the truth this morning. I believe you can. So, let's read this morning 1 John chapter four, verses 13 through 21. together right on the heels of where we were last week talking about God is love and we'll see that again repeated. Verse 13, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit. And we have seen and testified that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God abides in him and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment because as he is also, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this is the commandment we have from him. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. So from this passage of scripture, I want us to explore five wonderful truths about the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And I'm gonna go in reverse order of the text because there's something that happens theologically and experientially to us in the order of how the Spirit works. And so here's the first thing that the Spirit does, and this is even before you're a Christian. So here's first, the Spirit enables you to confess and believe in Jesus as your Savior. Now, look at verse 14 and 15. In verse 14, we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, abides in Him, and He in God. We have seen and we testify, we confess, we believe, The Holy Spirit enables you to testify, to confess, to believe in Jesus Christ. Now this assumes something. In that word enables, the Holy Spirit enables you. That assumes there's an inability beforehand. The Bible teaches that before you're a Christian, there is a spiritual inability in all of us to actually be able to confess Jesus as our Lord and Savior. The Holy Spirit must regenerate you. He must make you alive. As a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit must grant you the gift of faith to even be able to believe in Jesus. Now, why must the Spirit do this? Because we are spiritually dead and unable to do anything positively on our own to come to Christ. Jesus says this in John 6, 44. No one can come. Greek word there for can come is the Greek word dynamos, which means power. No one has the power. No one can come to me. No one can believe in Jesus unless The Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. You must be drawn to believe in Jesus. Ephesians 2, 4-5, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love of which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ. By grace you've been saved. You were spiritually dead and you need to be made spiritually alive. Who makes you spiritually alive? The Spirit does. The Holy Spirit makes you alive. And He gives this to you in sovereign grace. Now, just a few verses down from Ephesians 2, 4, and 5, we have Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. You're probably very familiar with this passage of scripture. For by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Now that verse is very interesting. We know we're saved by grace. We know we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, but it says it is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Well, what's the it? Well, there's a lot of different ways you can interpret that passage of scripture, but let me tell you where I land after studying the Greek text. It is the gift of God, it is not from yourselves, it's the actual faith needed to believe in Jesus. In other words, you on your own can't even produce the faith to trust in Christ unless the Spirit gives that to you. So your act of believing, your act of faith in itself is a gift from the Spirit when He makes you alive. Martin Lloyd-Jones says this, faith is not the cause of our salvation. Christ is the cause of our salvation. And I must never speak in such a way as to represent faith as the cause of my salvation. It's not our decision, our deciding for Christ that makes us Christians. Decision does come into it, but it's not our decision that makes us Christians. The faith that you have, the decision that you made was not your own, it was God's gift to you when he made you alive. Paul says it this way in Philippians 1.29, for it's been granted to you for the sake of Christ that you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake. It's been granted for you to believe. That word grant in the original language is the same word we get the word grace. God's grace has been given to you so that you would believe in Jesus. So the faith that you had to believe was a gift from the Holy Spirit given to you when he made you spiritually alive. And so Paul says it this way. In the book of Acts, Luke writes when Paul goes down to the river, Acts 16, 14, one who heard this was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple goods who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. Who opened whose heart? Did Lydia open her heart or did the Lord open her heart? The Lord opened her heart to believe. Now there's a passage of scripture you may have never really read or you kind of maybe read it quickly and didn't think much about it. It's 1 Corinthians 12.3. I want you to think about this. 1 Corinthians 12.3, therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Did you see that? No one can, there's an inability. You can't say Jesus is Lord, you can't confess Jesus is Lord unless or except in the Holy Spirit. In other words, what the Holy Spirit does is the Holy Spirit gives you the ability to confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And the reason you cannot do that is because you were spiritually dead in your trespasses and sins, unless the Holy Spirit does that work. So this whole passage of Scripture is about God abiding in you and you abiding in God. And we know the Holy Spirit is the one who abides in us, so how do you know God abides in you? How do you know you're a Christian? Well, you may say, well, it's because I believe in Jesus. Well, exactly right. You're a Christian because you believe in Jesus, but let's back up a step. Why did you believe in Jesus? Because the Spirit gave me the ability to say yes to Jesus, because I did not have that ability before. I was dead in my sins. So you would not even be a Christian today unless the Holy Spirit made you spiritually alive and gave you the gift of faith to cry out to Jesus in faith. And then secondly, the Holy Spirit does immediately, He does something wonderful for you, in you, to you. Second, not only does He give you the gift of sovereign regeneration to make you come alive to confess Christ, but second, the Spirit permanently indwells you as God's great gift. Now I want to show you in verse 13 why the grammar is so important that John uses here. You don't get this tense in your English translations. It's called the perfect tense in the Greek text. But if you look at verse 13, by this we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us his spirit. Has given us. That word has given is in the tense that means this. Let me just explain it to you very simply. At the moment of your salvation, the spirit was given to you as a gift. But not only was it that initial point in time that the Spirit was given to you, but that tense of the verb means He always has been given to you. He always lives in you. He permanently resides in you. He's never going to go away. He's always gonna be given to you. And Jesus promised this in John 14, 16 through 17. Jesus said, I will ask the Father and He will give you another helper to be with you how long? Forever. Even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him, you know him, for he will dwell, what? With you, and he will be where? In you. Jesus says he will be with you forever. He will always exist in you, alongside of you, and he will dwell. Again, I'm not gonna bore you with the Greek, but there's a Greek tense called the timeless present. which means that it's always happening. And that's what John uses there for the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. He's always going to be dwelling in our hearts. In other words, the Holy Spirit doesn't come and go. I feel like I have the Holy Spirit today, and I feel like I don't have him tomorrow. He kind of came in me. He left. He went his merry way and now he's coming back, he fluctuates. No, the Holy Spirit is always going to be in you. He's never going to leave you. And John gives us three little prepositions in this one passage of scripture that Jesus says, he will be with you, signifies intimate fellowship. Another Greek word, he will be with you as a divine person to live inside you, and he will be in you, stressing his ongoing presence and source of your life. And so it should give you great encouragement as a Christian that the Holy Spirit is constantly, eternally, always in you, with you, by your side. Romans 8 and 9 says this. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the spirit. In fact, the spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. If you don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not a Christian. And the Holy Spirit does not come and go. He lives in us permanently as a seal or a down payment guaranteeing that we will have heaven. Mickey, one of our elders, read this earlier, but let me read it again. Ephesians 1, 13-14. In him also when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believe in him were sealed. with the promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory." It says we've been sealed. Now in the ancient world where Paul lived, a seal was like a stamp of wax that you would put on a document. It was also like a brand that you would brand cattle with. Or it also actually used sometimes to brand slaves. And so a seal in the ancient world had three purposes. First, it was used to confirm that the document was official. It had the official stamp of approval on that document. We have it today. So when the president tomorrow is inaugurated, and he corresponds with Congress, he puts his presidential seal on the paperwork to show that it comes from the president's desk and no other, and that's how he communicates with Congress. We got the presidential seal, it shows it's official. And so with the Holy Spirit being in us, it means that we are officially God's children. We are officially adopted by God and we officially belong to Him. But second, a seal was used also to brand cattle. A lot of you that work with cattle know that you brand cattle, it shows that it belongs to you. That cattle belongs to you. So what the seal means is that we belong to God. Because Jesus bought us with his blood, and the Holy Spirit's been given us that seal, it means that we permanently belong to God. And the Holy Spirit's never gonna leave us. It's a lasting, treasured possession that we are in God's presence. And then third, A seal was used as a security device. If the seal was broken, it meant somebody tampered with the contents of that document. What this means is the Holy Spirit is that unbreakable seal, which means this is God's unbreakable promise to you that you will never be lost, but that you will fully and finally endure to the end. You won't fall away because the Holy Spirit is that guarantee that you will receive your inheritance. And some translations say a down payment. The Holy Spirit's the down payment. What happens when you make a down payment on your home? You make a down payment on your mortgage, what's that? You're telling the bank what? I promise to make my monthly mortgage payments to pay this off. It's my promise that I'm gonna pay off my mortgage. Well, if the Holy Spirit's the down payment, it's God's promise to you, it's the down payment given to you that He always lives in you, and the down payment that you will get your inheritance, that you will one day be in heaven. And if the Holy Spirit Himself is the guarantee, if the Holy Spirit Himself is the down payment, is He gonna crumble under the pressure? Is He gonna leave you? Is He gonna forsake you? No, he's always going to be in you. 2 Corinthians 1, 21 through 22. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and he has anointed us and has put his seal on us and given us his Holy Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. So number one, the Holy Spirit has caused you to be born again so that you could confess Jesus as Lord, and number two, the Spirit lives in you always as God's promise that you'll always be saved. The Holy Spirit will never leave you if you're truly a believer. It should give you great encouragement, great security for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now what's the third thing this passage of Scripture tells us about the role of the Holy Spirit? Third, the Spirit gives you the deep assurance of God's continual love for you. He gives you the deep assurance of God's continual love for you. Look at verse 16. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. For God is love and whoever abides in love abides in him and God abides in him. We have come to know and believe God's love. Now this word know and believe is also in the perfect tense, which means it's not just a passing feeling, it means I've come to the solid assurance, I've come to know and believe deep in my heart what? What have I come to know and believe? What does that passage say? What have they come to know and believe? Verse 16, we have come to know and believe that the love that God has for us, that God is love. To know and believe and have the confidence that God will continually keep on loving me. Here's what bothers me a lot when I come into Christians that struggle with this. It's not uncommon for genuine Christians to doubt God's love for them. When we sin, we feel far away from God. When we experience trials and struggles, we feel maybe God has stopped loving me. Now you may never admit this out loud, but there are times as a true Christian where you may have doubted God's love for you. Now you know God loves you because God proved it once and for all when he sent Jesus to die on the cross. When Jesus cried out, it is finished, he paid for your sins, did he not? God loves you through Christ, but sometimes when you're going through bad experiences or you're going through trials, sometimes you don't experientially in your heart believe that. You doubt God's love. But what the Holy Spirit does is the Holy Spirit gives us that awareness, that confidence, that continual assurance that God keeps loving me. Why? Because God is love. We looked at this last week, God is love. Does God stop loving you? Does God fall in and out of love with you? Does God's love fluctuate? No, God's love is constant. God's love is unchanging, because God is unchanging. Jeremiah 31.3, God says, I've loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I've continued my faithfulness to you. Why can God continue to be faithful to us? Because he loved us. When did God start loving us? He never started, He always has. And He will never stop loving us. But sometimes we don't feel that love. Sometimes we don't experience that love. And that's where the role of the Holy Spirit comes in. The Holy Spirit who abides in us gives us that deep sense that God truly does love us. We started out the worship service with Romans 5.5, let me read it again. Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through who? The Holy Spirit, whom he has given to us. So how do we know God's love in our hearts? Through the Holy Spirit. The word abide here shows up four times, actually five times, five times in four verses. Abide, abide. How do you know you abide with God? How do you know you're a Christian? How do you know that you're truly saved? Well, we can look at these three things so far. Number one, the Holy Spirit has sovereignly caused you to be regenerated and born again so that you can confess Jesus as your Savior. Number two, the Holy Spirit's been given to you permanently to live inside of you. And number three, when you begin to doubt God's love, when you go through discouraging times, the Holy Spirit's been given to you to constantly remind you of God's permanent love for you. But not only that. What about on that final day when Jesus comes back? Here's the fourth thing. Fourth, the Spirit gives you confidence, not fear, for the day of judgment. The Spirit gives you confidence, not fear, for the day of judgment. Look at verses 17 and 18. By this is love perfected with us that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Because as He is so, also are we in this world. There's no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. Fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perfected in love. I've met a few Christians over the years that fear the second coming. They don't see it as the blessed hope, but they approach it with fear because somehow they think They're barely saved and they're gonna get in by the skin of their teeth and they're gonna barely make it. So they fear the second coming. I'm not sure I'm gonna make it. It's a day of fear for me, not a day of joy. Because what they look at is they look at their inward level of devotion, they look at their intensity, they look at how radical they are. They look at their own level of faithfulness as the source of their salvation as opposed to the finished work of Christ and his faithfulness for us and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Let me just say this as a side note. If you always look to yourself and your level of success for assurance of salvation, you're gonna be a pretty discouraged Christian. Because sometimes your level is never where it needs to be. And if you base your entire salvation on your level of intensity, your level of faithfulness, that's not where you need to be looking. Look to the finished work of Christ and the Holy Spirit in you that gives you that peace. Now why should we not fear the day of judgment, Christians? because all of our sins have already been judged in Christ. He took the punishment in our place. And the Holy Spirit constantly reminds us that we don't ever need to fear God. Romans 8, 14 through 15. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. but you've received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. Let me just put it this way. The Holy Spirit and fear are incompatible. They do not go together. Where the Spirit is, there is no fear. When you have fear, you're not relying on the Spirit. 2 Timothy 1.7, for God gave us a spirit not fear, but of power and love and self-control. Now verse 18 uses a very interesting word for punishment. Because there's no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, fear has to do with punishment. There's only one other place in the New Testament where that Greek word punishment shows up. It shows up here in 1 John, it shows up in Matthew when Jesus is talking about the sheep and the goats. Matthew 25, 46, talking about the goats. These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. Punishment here that John talking about is not God's fatherly discipline he's doing because he loves you. He's talking about you need not fear punishment in hell. If you're truly a child of God, you need not fear separation from God in hell. We believers will never experience the full punishment of God because our sins have been punished in Jesus and the Holy Spirit's been given to us. We do not need to fear the day of judgment. Jesus said in John 5 24, Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in me, who sent me, has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. So let me just say it this way, and this is the way that John would say it. If you're constantly fearing the end times, if you're constantly fearing the day of judgment, if you're constantly fearing God, if you're constantly fearing that maybe God doesn't love you, if you're an anxious, constantly fearful, stressful, anxious Christian, then look at the end of verse 18. God's love is not perfected in you. Verse 18, there's no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Now what does this mean? I don't think John is saying you're not saved. I think what he's saying is when you're not perfected in love, what I think he's saying is you don't understand God's love for you. You haven't matured in that area. You don't have assurance. You don't understand the role of the Holy Spirit in your life. You're living by fear as a Christian instead of by this assurance and confidence that the Spirit gives you that God loves you. So you've not been perfected in love. So how do you cast out fear? How do you experience this love? Will you go back to the role of the Holy Spirit? You ask the Holy Spirit to give you confidence, to give you assurance, to let you live in that assurance, to give you that understanding of God's love in a very profound way. Go back to 1 John 3, verses 19 through 21. John's also given us this before in verse 19. He says in chapter three, verse 19, by this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before him. So what does it mean to reassure our hearts? For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our hearts and he knows us. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. The Holy Spirit inside of you softens your heart, Quiet your heart, strengthen your heart, get you calmed down so that you can fully understand the peace of God, the love of God, the grace of God. Christians are not to live in fear and anxiety, to live in angst, wondering, have I done enough to get out of God's good graces? Have I just sinned this one time that God's gonna stop loving me? Now that is not an excuse for us to live however we want, but as Christians we should never fear the day of judgment and we should never fear that God has stopped loving us. The role of the Holy Spirit is to constantly give us that assurance. Now let's look at the fifth thing that the Holy Spirit does. Fifth, the Spirit empowers you to love others in practical ways in obedience to the first and second greatest commandments. Spirit empowers you to love others in practical ways in obedience to the first and second commandments. We see this in verses 19 through 21. What does John say? We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he's not seen. John uses an interesting word there for seen, the brother whom you've seen. It's as if John's saying, listen, these people are in front of you every day. They're before your eyes all the time. They're right in front of your face. And John's argument is this, if you can't love the people right in front of your face every day that are staring you in the face, how can you love God you can't see? You need to love those that God has placed before your very eyes. So how? How can you love when it's difficult to love? How can you love the invisible God first, who you've never seen, and how can you love people who you see all the time? And by the way, those people you see all the time, you may be like, I don't ever wanna see them again. They're driving me nuts. I want these people out of my life. And it's like, no, you can't have them out of your life. You gotta deal with them all the time. So how can you do that? Well, the Holy Spirit. Verse 21, John says there, this commandment we have from God. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. Okay, we have this commandment. Love God, love others. Let's just ask the question. What's the greatest commandment? Glad you asked, Pastor Sean, because Jesus gives us the answer. Matthew 22, 30, 60, 38. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? He said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. So what's the first commandment? To love God with the totality of our beings. Okay, what's the second commandment? Next verse, Matthew 22, 39. And second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So what are the two greatest commandments? Love God and love neighbor. Love God who you can't see and love your neighbor who you can see. How can you do that? Now implied in the text is that it's the spirit that's been given to you. The spirit empowers you to love others in practical ways. Remember what John said earlier. Go back to chapter three. Remember, John repeats himself. He wants to get it through our thick skulls. So back in chapter three, verse 17, 317, if anyone has the world's good and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. Here's the bottom line. The Holy Spirit is indispensable to your Christian life. You would not be saved without the Holy Spirit. You would still be dead in your sins without the Holy Spirit. You would still be alienated from God without the Holy Spirit. You would still fear the day of judgment without the Holy Spirit. You would not experience the love of God without the Holy Spirit. And you could not love God and love others without the Holy Spirit. And let me just put it this way, you probably really can't do anything of spiritual value and significance without the Holy Spirit. in your life. John Stott said it this way, I really like what he said. Without the Holy Spirit, our minds are dark and our hearts cold. Only the Holy Spirit can enlighten our minds to believe in Jesus and warm our hearts to love God and love others. So believing and loving are evidence that his spirit is at work within us. If you have a dark mind and a cold heart, you probably don't have the Holy Spirit in your life. If you're not believing in Jesus and you're not loving others, you probably don't have the Holy Spirit in your life. The Holy Spirit lives inside of us always. The Holy Spirit made you alive in Christ. The Holy Spirit gives you this deep assurance that you are loved by God. The Holy Spirit drives out fear and helps you stand assured on the day of judgment. The Holy Spirit gives you the power to love God and love others in practical ways. You cannot do anything without the Holy Spirit. But let me just remind you of one other thing that the Holy Spirit does. Jesus reminds us in John 16, 14. He, talking about the Spirit, he will glorify me for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. The goal of the Holy Spirit ultimately is to point us to Jesus. He's indispensable, the Holy Spirit, but he points you to Jesus. J.I. Packer gives a wonderful illustration about this, where the Holy Spirit's like a floodlight. What's a floodlight? On a really cold, icy day like today, and you're walking along a path at night, and maybe there's a floodlight that's on a building to light the path. Do you look at the floodlight or do you look at the path to make sure you don't fall? What do you look at? You look at the path. You look at where you're going. But without the floodlight, what would happen? You'd slip and fall. So while the path in front of you is where you're to keep your eyes, you would not be able to keep your eyes there without the floodlight behind you. And J.I. Packer says the Holy Spirit's like the floodlight. He is indispensable, He is important, but He's not drawing attention to Himself, He's shining the light on Jesus so that we would all keep our eyes fixed on Christ. He will glorify Christ so that we could see the glories of Christ. So would you praise your Heavenly Father for sending the Holy Spirit to shine the light of Jesus on our eyes so that we would be consumed by the glories of Christ as our all in all. I hope you leave this place praising your Heavenly Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit in your life. He is indispensable. You cannot live without the sovereign spirit of the living God deep in your heart, giving you grace every step of the way. So let me ask you to bow your heads, and I want you to go before your great God this morning, and I wanna give you a little extra time this morning just to praise your Father in heaven for giving you the gift of the Spirit. Just spend some time in thanksgiving, spend some time in gratitude. If you are fearing this morning, ask the Holy Spirit to cast out that fear. If you're anxious this morning, ask the Holy Spirit to cast out that anxiety. If you're doubting this morning, ask the Spirit to get rid of those doubts. Rely on the sovereign supernatural spirit in your life to grant you the grace you need to go out of this place with the assurance that God loves you and that he's for you and he'll be with you every step of the way until Jesus comes back. Would you spend some time in prayer this morning? Good to come into your presence this morning. We've come out of the cold into a warm building But more importantly, we wanna have warm hearts. Hearts that beat joyfully for our Savior. Hearts that beat joyfully for other people that we can love them in practical ways. And the only way our hearts can beat joyfully and the only way we can have soft, warm hearts is because of the Spirit. Holy Spirit, thank you that you are sovereign. that you are powerful, that you are the seal in our hearts guaranteeing that we have heaven, that you will never leave us or forsake us, that you will indwell us always until that final day and when Jesus comes back and there's the day of judgment, we won't have fear. We'll have the assurance that God loves us because of your work in our lives. So Spirit of the living God, would you fall fresh upon us? Spirit of the living God, would you fall fresh upon families that are in turmoil? Spirit of the living God, would you fall fresh on lives here this morning that are in confusion or in pain? Spirit of the living God, would you fall fresh upon our church and bring revival and spiritual awakening? Spirit of the living God, would you fall fresh upon our nation bring about a transformation that can only be described by the Spirit, not something we can manufacture as people. Spirit, we desperately need you. We cannot live without you. We thank you for indwelling us, always being there for us. And as we leave, Spirit, would you help, like the floodlight, point our eyes to Jesus? As we walk out of this place, we would know the love of the Father for us and keep our eyes always fixed on Jesus through the power that you give us, Spirit. So we praise you, Father, Son, and Spirit. We love you, we honor you. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.