Speaker: What if I could tell you who's going to win the Super Bowl tonight?
You may know because you may think the Chiefs are playing with some
extra players on the field wearing some, uh, pinstripe black and white
jerseys out there on the field.
This is the, as a Cowboys fan, this is the worst.
I'm done with the Chiefs, okay?
And the Eagles, I can't.
So I'm just going to pray Jesus comes back tonight.
Okay.
Before the end of the game.
That's my prayer.
Because I don't want the Eagles getting another one and I'm done with the Chiefs.
But what if I could tell you that?
Would that benefit you?
If I could stand up here and say, I'm going to prophesy who's
going to win the Super Bowl.
Would that benefit you spiritually at all?
You might think it'd benefit me financially.
If I knew ahead of time, I might put some money on that game and
see what would happen from there.
But spiritually, would it benefit you to know who's going to win that game tonight?
Probably not.
What if I could tell you when Jesus is going to come back?
There's a guy named Harold Camping.
Maybe you remember that name?
You familiar with that name?
Twelve times he said, Jesus is coming back now.
This time.
This is going to be the time.
Twelve times he was wrong.
And now Harold Camping is dead and gone.
And yet people kept believing him.
People kept coming back.
But would that help us?
I would almost argue if we knew when Jesus was going to come back,
that wouldn't help us spiritually, that might hurt us spiritually.
After all, we're meant to be ready at all times for him to come back at any moment.
And if you knew man, Jesus isn't coming back for a few years, you
might be tempted to say, okay, I'm just going to, I don't need to worry
about spiritual things right now.
I can just go live however I want to live.
And then I'll just get right with him before he comes back.
You wouldn't live every day ready for his return the way we're supposed to.
See, as humans, I get it.
We have this inherent desire, and that's why people kept going back to Harold
Camping, going, Okay, I'm gonna believe you this time because we have an inherent
desire within us to know the inside scoop.
We want to know as much truth as we possibly can get.
We want to make sure that we're not behind the curve on that, and
that's why we keep going back saying, Man, it would be great if all of
these prophecies were legitimate.
Maybe you're sitting out there going, Okay, maybe no one who's gonna win
the Super Bowl isn't gonna help me.
Or maybe.
You know, if Jesus, no one Jesus is going to come back, maybe that
would have a bad effect on me.
But there's good things that prophecy could help us with, right?
Like, what about COVID?
Wouldn't have been nice to have a heads up on that one.
Or what about the, the election?
People would have liked to know the outcome of the election if
somebody could have prophesied this is what's going to happen.
Or what about the fires in California?
That would have been good to have a heads up on that.
Hey, this is going to happen and you guys should be ready for this.
And maybe you're even thinking back and saying, well, God used to work that way.
Think back to the Old Testament.
We've been reading in our daily Bible reading with Pharaoh in the Exodus.
And you remember Pharaoh had his dreams even before that with Joseph.
He had the dreams of the fat cows and the skinny cows.
And the fat cows swallowed up the skinny cows.
And Joseph was able to give a prophetic interpretation of that dream.
Saying this is going to be seven years of plenty.
Followed by seven years of famine.
And so we need to get ready and prepare for that.
Why doesn't he work that way still today?
Or maybe he does.
That's our task at hand this morning is to figure that out.
How do we hear the voice of God today?
How does Jesus set us up to expect to hear the voice of God today?
See, what I'd like to suggest, Christian, is you and I today are
called to walk by faith, right?
And not by sight.
Peter tells us that we're not to be surprised by the fiery trials that come
upon us, not because we've got a prophet that told us that they were coming, but
because we trust in a God who's gonna use those trials no matter what in
our life, to make us more like Jesus.
And so as we come to our text and we have this innate desire, and
it's not an evil desire, it's not a bad desire to say, man, God, I just
wish you would speak to me audibly.
I just want to hear your voice.
I want to know what you want me to do with my life.
That's a good desire, but I think deep down it reveals a
couple of deficiencies within us.
I think it reveals that we have a deficient view of God's word
and a deficient understanding of the Spirit's role.
And what I think we find in our text this morning, John chapter
16, verses 12 through 15, is this.
If you've got the Spirit and you've got the Word, you've got everything
that you're ever going to need.
If you've got the Spirit and you've got the Word, you have everything
that you're ever going to need.
Take your Bibles to John 16 verses 12 through 15.
If you're new with us, we're in the midst of, towards the backside of a study of
the Gospel of John, and we've been in this series called Disciple, where we
picked up in the upper room, and Jesus has been moving from the upper room
now over to the Garden of Gethsemane.
And he's about to be betrayed.
He's about to be arrested.
He's about to be tried.
He's about to be crucified.
And he's getting his disciples ready to know what discipleship is
going to look like once he's gone.
And he's been talking a lot about the Helper, the Holy Spirit.
And we're still going to be talking about that in our text.
Look at verse 12.
It says this, Jesus says, I still have many things to say to you,
but you cannot bear them now.
Jesus, again, right on the doorstep of the cross, is telling his disciples, I've
got so much more to say to you, but, but right now, I'm, time is running short,
and, and you're not able to bear them.
In other words, you can't take it right now.
And I think there's two reasons why they weren't able to bear it right now.
Number one, they're just emotional state.
They're in a state of confusion.
A little bit of a state of panic, a little bit of a state of, of distress
because their rabbi, who they love, and, and remember Peter's already
confessed that he is the Christ.
They're expecting him to be the Messiah to establish the kingdom right now,
and he's been talking about leaving.
In fact, he's been talking about dying.
And so, emotionally, they're not ready to handle the rest
of what he wants to tell them.
But then I think the second reason is, is because they weren't ready yet to
understand them because they wouldn't have had any frame of reference to understand
the rest of what he wanted to tell them.
Let me give you an example.
If Jesus had looked at Peter and his followers at that point in time and
said this, hey, have this mind amongst yourselves, Philippians 2, 5 through 8,
which is yours in me, in Christ Jesus, who though I was in the form of God.
Did not count on quality with God, a thing to be grasped, but emptied myself.
And I took on the form of a servant being found in human
likeness according to the flesh.
And I humbled myself to the point of death, even death on a cross.
I want you to have that mind amongst yourself.
Peter and the rest of the followers would have looked at Jesus like,
What are you talking about?
See, when he says, I've got more things to talk to you about, But
you're not able to handle them now.
He's talking about the rest of what we have in the rest of the New Testament.
He's saying there's more that you need to understand about what it
looks like to be my disciple, but you're not ready for them yet.
Hence, what does he say next?
Look at the text.
He says in verse 13, When the spirit of truth comes, he will
guide you into all the truth.
For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever
he hears, he will speak.
And he will declare to you the things that are right.
Those things that Jesus wanted to tell them that they weren't able to yet bear.
He says when the spirit of truth, that's a title that John, that Jesus has already
used for the spirit in the gospel of John.
The spirit of truth is going to come and guide you into all truth.
There's a couple ways that we can understand the word guide, right?
You can understand it like a tour guide.
A tour guide's job is to lead you from point A to point B.
He's gonna walk you through.
That's what he's doing.
Jesus speaks of the Pharisees that way when he indicts them.
He says that you are blind guides leading the blind.
But there's another way to understand God, and that's more along the lines of
a rabbi or a teacher or an instructor.
somebody who's going to guide you deeper into a knowledge and
understanding of a given field.
That's the way that Jesus is using the word guide here with the Holy Spirit.
He's going to guide you into all the truth.
In other words, he's going to take you deeper into the truth that you're
not yet ready to bear up under.
And the reason being, is he's not going to speak on his own authority,
but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to
you the things that are to come.
Now, the things that are to come, there's a few ways that we could look at that, a
few ways that we could understand that.
The first being this, we could say that that is referring to
eschatology, the end times.
That he's going to guide us into things that are to come, yet future,
even from where we sit this morning.
That's possible, but probably not likely.
And the reason I would say it's not likely is because John's emphasis has not been
on end times very much in his gospel.
There's been a couple of times he's highlighted what Jesus has said
about the future, but really, he hasn't been talking a lot about that.
If this was in Matthew, we could get there, because Matthew had
talked about the signs of the times.
Matthew had talked about what to expect when it comes to
eschatology in the end times.
So if this is Matthew's gospel, we might track with that.
But for John to record these words here from Jesus and, and write
them down this way, it would be a little out of place for John.
But it, it is possible, all that to say.
Second option is this.
He could have been saying, Hey, the things that are to come are the
betrayal, the arrest, the trials, and the crucifixion of Jesus.
The problem there is, the spirit isn't going to be received by the
disciples until after the ascension.
After Jesus has already done all that.
And so, they don't need him to tell them that those things are coming because
they will have already experienced them.
And so I think the third option, which is the likely option, is
the things that are to come are, Man, this is what discipleship
looks like after Jesus is gone.
And Aka what we have in the rest of the New Testament, the epistles, the letters
of Paul, the letters of James, the letters of Peter, the letters of John,
that the spirit of truth is going to come guide them into all truth, declaring
to them the things that are to come.
Now let's talk about that phrase all truth for a second.
It's important that we understand the nature of that truth because Jesus is not
saying that the spirit is going to show up and declare to them all truth such
that if you pull Peter aside and said, Hey, what is M equals MC squared mean
that he's going to be able to explain Or if you pulled Peter aside and said,
Hey, uh, what is the law of gravity?
What is that all about?
Peter's not going to be able to explain that.
So all truth is not all truth universally speaking, but all
the truth that God needed them to understand as his followers.
This is pointing to what we refer to as the doctrine of
the sufficiency of God's word.
That is for you to be a follower of Jesus in this life, you have
everything that you need right here, or in that app that's on your phone.
It's all right here.
We don't need additional revelation to teach us what it looks like to
be a follower, a disciple of Jesus, because we have the Spirit leading us,
guiding us into all truth, and that all truth is contained in the Word of God.
Jesus is going to say in John 17, 17, Sanctify them, set
them apart in your truth.
Your word is truth.
And so the Spirit's job and the Spirit's role in our life, one of the main roles,
is to lead us, guide us into all truth.
As we consider this desire to hear the voice of God, I think innately underlying
that is a desire for what is true.
In a world where there's a lot of things out there that aren't true.
frankly aren't true.
We want to know more of what is in accordance with the character of
who God is, that is what is true.
And along those lines, we have to understand that we have the
greatest source of God's truth in our hands in the Word of God.
The greatest source of truth, the greatest standard of truth,
is ours in the Scriptures.
And so along those lines, our first point this morning is this,
don't drift from God's truth.
As you're wanting to hear more from God, as you're wanting to hear,
God, I, I, I want to hear your voice more than I do right now.
The first thing I want us to do is anchor ourselves to the
Scriptures as our abiding, objective, ultimate source of truth.
The assault on truth is evident in the world around us, has been for a long time.
You'll hear statements like this, Well, there's no such thing as absolute truth.
Well, that's true for you, but it's not true for me.
All truth is relative.
Or the statement, truth is ultimately unknowable.
By the way, just apologetically, you understand that all of
those are self defeating, right?
If I say, there's no such thing as absolute truth, the question
then is, is that absolutely true?
Or if I tell you, you know what, that's true for you, but not for me.
Okay, is that statement true for me as well as you?
In other words, is that objectively true, that it's true for you but not for me,
which means it's true for everyone then?
Or, all truth is relative.
Is that relative?
That all truth is relative?
Or, truth is ultimately unknowable.
How do you know?
So when we hear these things, this is the world's assault on truth, and
the enemy has blinded the eyes of the world so much that people buy into it.
I'm sure you know people who have used this argument with you in regards to why
they don't want to buy into the gospel, or why they don't want to believe in God.
And that's great for you, I'm glad you found your thing, but it's not for me.
Y'all, this is nothing new.
This can go all the way back and even before this, but the philosopher
Hegel, Hegel was was one of the first people that, that introduced
the idea of synthesis, okay?
So Hegel basically said this, he said, rather than saying we've got antithesis
and thesis, meaning, this is, I'm claiming this to be true and this is
the antithesis, this is what's not true.
Hegel said, you know what, rather than thinking in those categories, let's
start thinking in terms of synthesis.
Let's find where we can be in, in, in common ground together.
Let's borrow a little bit of this truth, a little bit of that truth, and let's
come up with something in the middle.
After Hegel, you had a guy named Kierkegaard.
Kierkegaard came along and, and he said this, instead of trying to make
God and the Christian faith perfectly intelligible, Kierkegaard sought
to emphasize the transcendency of God beyond all human categories.
In other words, Kierkegaard took the approach of saying we can't really
know anything for sure because God transcends all of our limitations, all
of our human categories of knowledge.
And I would say yes, that's true, except that He has made Himself known to us in
and primarily through His Word, right?
Don't drift from God's truth.
But see, this has become the, the, the M.
O.
for our culture.
We've bought into this mentality that we can't know, that we just need to
find something, some common ground.
Let's all just get together.
Let's all be in agreement with each other.
And what it's resulted in is it's resulted in absolute chaos.
We have the chaos of belief where the absurd is now reality.
I read an article last week where a guy has spent tens of thousands of
dollars to turn himself into a dog and he believes himself to be a dog.
He's not a dog, never will be, no matter how much money he puts at it.
But we've got a world that's like, okay, but that's his truth.
Let him live his truth.
Or the chaos of morality, where the taboo is now just celebrated.
It's no longer true for you to say, well, that's wrong.
Or that's a sin.
We live in the chaos of authority where there is no more centralized
authority for us that we can appeal to, to say, this is what God's word says.
This is what is true.
Objectively.
We live in the world indicated and characterized by the chaos of tolerance
where everyone is entitled to be offended by whatever they want to be offended by.
We live in a world of the chaos of culture.
Where the loudest voice gets to set the agenda.
This is the, the cost of our drift from truth.
And I'm just saying for us Church, we have to come back, if we're gonna
say we want to hear from God, we want to know the voice of God, we have to
anchor ourselves to something that is objectively the definition of truth.
And for us, the surest definition of that truth is the Word of God.
It's the scriptures.
Don't drift from the Word of God, from the truth.
Is truth knowable?
Yes.
Even from the world's point of view, you've got the law of non
contradiction, which states that two things cannot be both true and
competing truths at the same time.
I can't tell you, I am both 100 percent bone dry and completely soaked up here
while I stand up here and talk to you.
One is objectively true.
You can look at me and go, he doesn't have any water on him.
He's dry.
There's another way that we could go about that.
It's a statement of what's called tautology, which says all possible
references, all possibilities are contained in a statement like this.
It's either going to rain today, or it's not going to rain today.
That is an objectifiably true statement, because if it
rains, that statement is true.
I said it's either going to rain, or it's not going to rain.
If it rains, the statement is true.
If it doesn't rain, that statement is still true, because I said it's either
going to rain, or it's not going to rain.
Okay, that statement is true.
So even when we get into the world's realm, yes, truth is there.
But the truth we're concerned about is spiritual truth.
Is spiritual truth knowable and do we have it in the scriptures?
And I think the answer is yes.
First Corinthians chapter 2.
Verses 14 through 16.
First Corinthians 2, let me back up even before this, verse 12.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.
In order that, we might understand the things freely given to us by God.
And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught
by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are folly to him, and he's not able to understand them, because
they are spiritually discerned.
So the question is spiritual truth noble?
The answer is yes.
For who?
For those who have the spirit, for Christians, and it's revealed primarily
and fundamentally in the word of God.
So don't drift from God's truth.
As we're saying, God, we want to hear more from you.
We have to make sure that we are not exceeding the bounds of what we have
as the greatest source of revelation.
contained within the Word of God.
But if we've established the fact that truth is there and it's knowable and
that God is speaking, because He is speaking, we have to ask the question and
answer the question, how is He speaking?
And in what ways is He speaking?
So that's where we're gonna go in this next point.
Look back at our text together.
He goes on and he says this, For he will not speak, speaking of the
Spirit, chapter 13, or chapter 16 verse 13, he will not speak on his
own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare
to you the things that are to come.
So here we find that the Spirit's role in our lives is,
is to convey something to us.
And it's not to convey something that's based on his own authority, but he's
going to speak not on his own authority, but on the authority that he has.
receives from the Father and from the Son.
John 12 49, Jesus said that he didn't speak on his own authority.
Jesus in John 12 49 says, I have not spoken on my own authority, but the
Father who sent me has given me a commandment what to say and what to speak.
The Spirit likewise is saying, I'm not going to speak on my own
authority, but on the authority of the one who speaks through me.
That is Christ.
And this is where we get into this concept now of what God is doing
in conveying these truths to us.
Hebrews chapter one, Hebrews chapter one verses one and two.
Hebrews 1, 1, and 2 says this, Long ago, at many times, in many ways, God
spoke to our fathers by the prophets.
So that's the Old Testament.
He's speaking through that, that direct revelation to the prophets, and
through dreams, and through visions.
But the writer says this, But in these last days, now, He has spoken to us
by His Son, through whom He appointed the heir, or whom He appointed the
heir of all things, and through whom He also created the world.
And so the Spirit's job then is to take the words of Christ, the authority, the
content of the gospel that we hear through Jesus and to bring it through the writers
of the rest of the scriptures to us.
And so God is going to speak to us through the Spirit, and He's going
to speak the things that are to come.
Like I said, I think these are the things that are the rest of
the New Testament scriptures.
How it looks for us to live out our relationship with Jesus.
I said at the very beginning, when we have this inherent desire, this
longing to hear more of God's voice.
It's not a bad desire, but it reveals a deficiency in our
understanding of the nature of God's Word and the role of the Spirit.
And the first thing I think it identifies about our misunderstanding
about the nature of God's Word is that we have an anemic view of the Bible.
We have an anemic view of the Bible.
Point number two this morning is this, don't ignore the
living and active Word of God.
Don't ignore the living and active Word of God.
Sometimes we, it's like, yeah, I get it.
We got the Bible.
That's great.
Thanks God.
But, but man, I'd love to hear more.
God does still, still speak to us today.
He still speaks 100%.
We just have to define how that looks.
And the surest and most authoritative voice that we
have is found in the Scriptures.
I referenced it just a moment ago, but Hebrews 1, 1 through 2.
Not only Hebrews 1, 1 through 2, but also Hebrews 4, 12.
For the Word of God is what, church?
It's okay.
You can talk.
It's alright.
The Word of God is what?
It's living!
The Word of God is living!
It's living and active.
That means when you come to the Word of God, the Word of God is
a dynamic force in your life.
That means when you come to the Word of God, because you have the Spirit
and you're reading God's Word, God is speaking to you in that moment
through the pages of God's Word.
He's bringing to light the truth contained therein.
That's what it means that the Spirit is going to guide you into all truth.
It's still true for you and I today, that when we pick this book up, it's different
than picking up and reading Shakespeare.
Just, I'll be honest with you, I've never read a word of Shakespeare
before in my entire life.
And I'm here, I'm okay.
You say, how'd you get through high school?
By the way, I don't encourage that, students that are here.
But Shakespeare is not a living and active work.
When you pick it up and read it, Shakespeare's not talking to you.
Shakespeare's dead.
He's gone.
He's not here.
What makes the Bible, the Word of God, living and active today is your
Savior is alive and the Spirit is alive and the Spirit is dwelling
within you, taking the Word of God and bringing it to bear in your life.
So it's different.
So you can pick it up and read it and it's going to be relevant to
you today Just like it was relevant a hundred years ago or 2, 000 years
ago, for example, when it was first being put down, the New Testament.
God is still speaking to us today, and we need to be careful about wishing
that, saying, God, will you just talk to me when we have it right here?
I mean, I was thinking about it this week, and it was wrecking me for a second,
because I was thinking about when my son, who's, who's, uh, what year is it?
Yeah, this is good dadness right here.
This is excellent parenting.
He's a sophomore.
It's gonna be a junior next year.
That means two years.
He's gonna leave.
He's gonna go to college, and I was thinking about him going
to college, and, and just.
I know I'm going to have the pain when he leaves to go and I
wish I had more time with my son.
And yet, at the same time, it's like me sitting there wishing I had
more time with him and yet when he says, Hey, can we go play catch?
Hey, can we go to a ball game together?
Hey, can we, can we hang out together?
Can we do this together?
And me going, yeah, maybe later.
The comparison is this, y'all.
When I get to heaven, I don't want to sit there and say, God, I just wish you
had spoken more to me throughout my life.
Only to think back at the number of times I just left my Bible on the shelf.
I left it in the backseat of my car.
I left it on the night table.
I God is speaking to us presently through his word.
It's available.
It's there.
He's communicating to us.
And so what does that mean?
That means church, when we come to the word of God, we have to
come to the word of God with great intentionality and great expectation.
We need to come to God's word and we need to pray as we come
to God's word with the psalmist.
Lord, open my eyes that I might behold wondrous things out of your law.
We need to have that expectation every time we pick up the bible and read it that
God is going to speak to us through it.
That it is living, inactive.
Again, I think this deficiency is that we've got an anemic view of
just what we have in the Word of God.
We talked about it a few weeks ago, but just the advancements
in technology that are super cool that we get to experience today.
I wrote some of this message while I was sitting in a coffee shop in
downtown Dallas, like 45 minutes away from my office where my books are.
Because why?
Because I've got a laptop with Logos on it.
I've got my resources right there at my fingertips.
It's pretty awesome.
You've got full self driving Tesla's now that are literally rolling
themselves off of the production line and taking them to the stalls to be
loaded on to the shipping containers.
It's insane.
We've got cameras with 50 megapixel cameras on our phones.
Y'all do you remember wanting a five megapixel digital camera?
Anybody remember that when the digital cameras were
coming out in five megapixels?
It was like, you got five?
You got 50 on your phone.
It's amazing.
Cars, air travel, internet, food, food availability, Target, Target exists.
Like that's something that's pretty amazing.
Amazon, Walmart's delivering things with drones now, okay?
All of these things should at least at some point cause us to
go, Wow, that's pretty amazing.
And yet a lot of those things we've grown pretty complacent
and pretty comfortable with.
We're like, yeah, it's just part of what it looks like to be alive right now.
Y'all, we've done that to a much greater degree with what we
have in our hands in the Bible.
Forgive my volume for a second, but you've got the word of God in your hands.
Imagine that.
And we're sitting there saying, God, I just wish I could hear more from you.
In my office, I've, I have two sheets of paper that are in frames.
If you ever come to my office, you'll see them there.
And they're in frames.
They're sitting up on my bookshelf.
And what they are, if you look at them, and they just look like chicken scratch.
And if you try to read them, it's like, what does that say?
What these are, they're two original manuscripts of Charles
Spurgeon's preaching notes.
And they're there.
And the reason they're in frames is because I value them.
How much more should I be valuing God's word?
Impressed with God's Word?
This is from God, not Spurgeon?
Amanda and I were in Washington, uh, or in Israel, um, in 20, 2019, and we got
to see fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And you think, wow, that's so cool.
That's the, the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and yet they
contain the same inspired Word of God that we hold in our hands today.
We, we sit here today as beneficiaries of the Spirit's work in those disciples
that Jesus describes in this passage, of, of declaring the things that are to come.
And I'm just saying, I think our view of it is so anemic.
We need to understand what we have and not ignore it, And not
say, I just wish I had more.
I mean, Peter says this in 2 Peter chapter 1.
He says, No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.
But men spoke from God, carried along by the Spirit.
And so y'all, if you want to hear more of the Spirit's voice in your life, don't
ignore the living and active Word of God.
Now let me address this.
Does the Spirit speak by other means?
I'm going to say yes, with the caveat that we can't say, Thus says the
Lord, with any of those other means.
And so, you may say, does, does the Spirit speak to me through my, my
godly friends, through other believers that are present in my life, through
counselors that I have in my life?
And I would say, yes, absolutely.
The Scripture says in Proverbs 11, 14, where there's no guidance, a
people falls, but in an abundance of counselors, there's safety.
And so, the Spirit can use an abundance of godly people in your
life to help you make decisions.
You're just not going to be able to make that decision saying, thus says the Lord.
It's a different form of speaking.
It's a more subtle.
It's a less direct form of speaking.
Or the Spirit's going to speak to us, Lord willing, or ideally, through pastors.
Because of what the pastor's role is.
In Acts 20, 27, the Apostle Paul says, I did not shrink from declaring
to you the whole counsel of God.
My job is to preach the Word of God to you, church.
And so I'm preaching the Word of God to you, then hopefully, if I'm doing
that faithfully, the Spirit can take the Word of God and take the sermon
and begin to apply that to your life.
But here's the thing, and let me make this abundantly clear, the only time
anything, the only time anything, let me say this again, the only time
anything I say up here is inspired or inerrant is when I quote the Word of God.
Okay?
That's it.
Everything else is subject to my own fallibility.
And so be good Bereans, take it to the Word of God, because that's our standard.
But can the Spirit speak through pastors and through sermons?
Yes, He can, and He does.
How about our conscience?
Can the Spirit speak through our conscience?
Yeah, the Spirit can speak through our conscience.
Hebrews 9, 14.
How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit,
offer Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from the
dead works to serve the living God?
Notice there, that through the regeneration of the Spirit,
God purifies our conscience.
So that we will, through our conscience, be better servants
of the Lord of, of the, the Lord.
And so the Spirit can speak to us through the conscience.
But again, we can't say, thus says the Lord, when it comes to our conscience,
because your conscience may be softer to something than my conscience is.
And so there's that whole issue of Christian liberty and freedoms there.
But all that to say, there are other means that God uses His Spirit to convey
things to us, to communicate to us.
It's just the surety, the, the, the most certain way He does it is right here.
You want to hear the inerrant, infallible Word of God, this is the only place
you're going to be able to go, right here.
Okay, what about other means that today people say, hey, the
spirit is speaking this way?
What about direct revelation?
Is there any direct revelation today?
And I'm going to say, uh, no on that.
Ephesians chapter two, verse 20 says that the church is built upon the foundation
of the apostles and the prophets.
It's the, the New Testament, basically, is what he's, he's driving out there.
The apostles and the prophets, the bookends of the Bible, the prophets
being Old Testament, apostles being New Testament, with Christ Jesus
himself being the cornerstone.
In other words, Paul is saying in Ephesians 2, that we have everything
that we need in the revealed Word of God.
Jude chapter 3.
Jude writes this, In other words, we're not getting additional
revelation that God has given to us.
Even as Jude wrote this at this time, he said we have everything that we
need as far as the revelation of God's Word in the content that we need.
Again, if you've got the Spirit and you've got the Word, you've
got everything that you need.
New Testament prophecy can be defined this way, because there
are prophets in the New Testament.
New Testament prophecy was this.
It was a miraculous act of intelligible communication rooted
in spontaneous divine revelation.
Empowered by the Spirit, resulting in words that could be attributed by any
and all members of the Godhead, and it must be received by those who hear or
read them as absolutely binding and true.
Because you may be thinking about, well, what about Agabus?
Wasn't Agabus a New Testament era prophet?
And I would say, yes, he was.
But Agabus fit the mold of the Prophe prophets at the time.
What he prophesied came to pass when he prophesied that there would be a famine.
The famine came to pass when he prophesied that Paul was
gonna be bound and and arrested.
Paul was going to be bound and arrested, and he was bound and arrested.
And so Agabus lived up to the standard here, but also during the timeframe of
the, the revelation of God still being actively delivered there to the church.
The prob problem that we get into today is.
Do you know what the penalty for a false prophet was in the Old Testament?
Anybody?
Death, right?
Okay, so nobody who's claiming to be a prophet today is gonna say, yep,
Yep, if I'm wrong stone me to death.
Deuteronomy 13 15 says that's what we're supposed to do.
But today what we've done is in an effort to try to, to soften the blow because
no prophet stands up and claims to be, well, not a prophet in their right
mind at least, let's just say, which is even an interesting concept, stands
up and claims to be infallible today.
They're going to admit that they can make mistakes like Harold Camping.
So what we've done is we've redefined prophecy.
So this guy named Thistleton, he's a scholar, says this, Prophets
today they provide pastoral insight.
That doesn't sound like what the Bible describes prophecy to be.
Pastoral insight or a God given utterance, that's, that's bold,
unprompted or it could be prepared.
Ultimately building up the Again, I don't know that I look at a lot
of prophecy in the Bible and see that it was meant to build up and
make the addressees feel good.
And it's from the Holy Spirit, that's what we're talking about here.
And then he says this, mistakes can be made.
The Bible would say, no, they can't.
If you're standing up and saying, thus says the Lord, I've got a
message from God and here it is.
You can't make mistakes.
That's off the table.
Sam Storms, who believes in the ongoing gift of prophecy, says this.
Prophecy is relevatory gifts.
And he says, relevant, relevant, relevant
Let me start over again.
Y'all, it's good I don't speak for a living or anything.
I'm really bad at it.
Revelatory gifts, there we go, are inescapably subjective.
And the people through whom they operate are unavoidably prone to error.
He goes on, he says, God puts words and phrases and sentences and images and
the like into our minds, stamped with the indelible imprint of his voice.
Although undeniably subjective and occasionally slippery impressions
are a valid means of divine communication in our heart,
y'all.
I'm not saying this is a tier one issue, but it's an important issue
that we have got to understand that this is not what the scripture holds.
This is not what the scriptures teach.
This is not prophecy according to any prophet that you're gonna find.
This type of prophecy led to the death of the prophet.
I
don't want to take an unfair shot,
so maybe I shouldn't.
I won't.
Yeah, I won't do that.
Again, y'all, Deuteronomy 18.
Let me, let me just remind us of the standards for a prophet.
Deuteronomy 18.
Let me start in verse 20, even though verse 22 is up here.
But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded
him to speak, Or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.
And if you say in your heart, how would we know that the Lord has not spoken?
When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come
to pass or come true, that word is not a word that the Lord has spoken.
Do you see the standard?
If he speaks and what he prophesies does not come true, he's a false
prophet and worthy of death.
Because why?
Because he's presuming to claim the authority of God that's not his to claim.
And that is a grave thing.
One that we can't say it's about subjective feelings that we have.
And I get it, they've redefined it.
Let me go real quick here.
John Piper puts it this way.
He says, look, outside the Bible, we have fallible, uncertain
impressions and messages.
Inside the Bible, we have rock solid, dependable messages.
And this is my point here.
It seems to me folly to crave the lesser authority, the lesser riches outside the
Bible, than the greater authority that we have barely tasted inside the Bible.
Man, I love that.
And Piper would say that he's a continuationist even.
And he's saying, look, the more foundational, reliable, truth,
and trustworthy, rich place for us to be is in the Word of God.
Martin Lloyd Jones put it this way.
He said, we must never separate.
We must never separate the Spirit and the Word.
The Spirit speaks to us through the Word, so that we should always doubt and
query any supposed revelation that is not entirely consistent with the Word of God.
Y'all, that's why John wrote to the early church, Test the spirits.
Test the spirits to see whether they're from the Lord.
You say, well, how do I test a spirit to know whether it's from the Lord?
I think there's some questions that can help us diagnose that.
Number one, does it exalt Jesus?
Does it oppose worldliness?
This is the biggest one here.
Does it agree with the scriptures?
Does it elevate truth?
And does it promote a love for God and others?
These were taken modified from Dr.
MacArthur.
Does it exalt Jesus?
Does it oppose worldliness?
Does it agree with the scriptures?
Does it elevate truth and does it promote a love for God and others?
We have, again, in the spirit, in the word, everything that we need.
We need to be very, very careful about anything outside of it.
Anything outside of
it.
Shocker, uh, I'm a cessationist in case that wasn't clear at this point.
But look, just because we're cessationist doesn't mean we don't
believe the Spirit's not speaking today.
I 100%, 100 percent believe that God is speaking to us today.
I'm just saying we need to understand where and how,
and that's through His Word.
But as we wrap up, I think we also need to understand what the role of the Spirit
is, and what to expect Him to be doing.
Because that's our other deficiency, not only a deficiency in our understanding
of the Word of God, that we've got an anemic view of the Word of God,
but we also have a misunderstanding of the, the role of the Spirit.
Notice as, as He continues on here, as we end in our text, He says this,
He will glorify me, Jesus says.
That's the Spirit's role, summed up right there.
He will glorify me.
Four, how's he gonna glorify Jesus?
He's gonna take what is mine and declare it to you.
All that the Father has is mine, therefore I said that he will take
what is mine and declare it to you.
The primary means of the Spirit glorifying the Son is through the revelatory
ministry of the Spirit, illuminating us to understand the Word of God more.
That's the main primary way that the Spirit is gonna glorify the Son.
That's why we're not looking for glory dust coming out of the vents.
Because that's exalting the Spirit, not the Son.
And the Spirit's job, the Spirit's role, is to glorify the Son.
And so as we think about this, as we land with our third point here,
as we're looking for hearing more from the Lord, we need to be careful
with this third point, not to expect the Spirit to grab the spotlight.
Don't expect the Spirit to grab the spotlight.
That's not his job.
One of the leading voices in Pentecostal theology, Jack Hayford, says this.
He says, in Pentecostal, the Pentecostal potpourri, I like to
say, In the Pentecostal Potpourri, only one thing is the same for all.
The passion they have to experience the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
This is the common denominator.
This is the emphasis, this emphasis on the Holy Spirit.
The third person of the Trinity is what defines the charismatic century.
The emphasis on the Holy Spirit is what defines that whole movement.
What does Jesus say the Holy Spirit's job is?
He will glorify me.
The church is meant to glorify and exalt Jesus and to be enraptured by Jesus.
This is what led MacArthur back in 2013 to do the whole strange fire conference.
It's because we were getting it so terribly wrong.
And it's still that way.
The Spirit's job is to glorify and exalt the Son and the primary way He's
going to do that is through illuminating the scriptures for you and me.
That said, I do want to address something that I think is important to us.
We have to be careful not then to spirit from within the Godhead.
Okay, just because the Spirit's role is to exalt Jesus.
We have to be careful not to relegate the spirit to God Jr.
We have to appreciate the fact that we have the very nature of God with
the third member of the Trinity dwelling within us as the Spirit.
That's, that's what we're
Back in the Council of Nicaea in A.
D.
325, they got together and they said this, as they were
crystallizing some core beliefs.
And they said this, we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.
He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and with the Father and the
Son, is worshiped and glorified.
But wait a minute, he's supposed to glorify the Son.
Yes, but he's still God, and we should still worship and glorify him.
How?
That's the question.
Two things I want to suggest.
Number one, worship Him in accordance with who He is and what He does.
Here's what I mean by that.
How can I worship and glorify the Spirit?
You can worship and glorify the Spirit by giving Him thanks.
By thanking Him for what He's done.
In other words, thank Him for regeneration, for the
fact that you're born again.
That's a way for you to praise the Spirit for the work that the Bible
says the Spirit does in your life.
You can thank Him for conviction over sin, that that's something
that the Spirit does in our life.
You can thank Him for illumination, for helping you to understand the Bible.
That's something that the Spirit does in our life.
You can praise Him for that.
You can thank Him for pointing you to Jesus and for exalting
Jesus more in your life.
That's something that the Spirit does in your life.
It's a way for you to praise and worship the Spirit.
Second thing you can do is you can pray to the Spirit in accordance
with who He is and what He does.
God is the only one that we pray to.
The Spirit is God.
You can pray to God.
You can pray to the Spirit.
But in accordance with who He is and what He does.
So pray prayers like this.
Pray, Spirit, please convict concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.
Convict the lost.
Convict the world concerning these things.
That's something the Spirit does.
You're asking Him to do what He does.
Pray, Spirit, please grant life, eternal life, to this person.
Again, you're asking the Spirit to do what the Spirit does.
Spirit, please open my eyes to learn more from this passage of the
Word as I come to it and read it.
Again, you're asking the Spirit to do what the Spirit does.
Spirit, please give me understanding and empower me to apply the truth of
the word as it's preached in my life.
You're asking the spirit to do what the spirit does.
Spirit, please help me to put to death the deeds of the body as I walk by the spirit.
You're asking the spirit to do what the spirit does.
So don't expect the spirit to take center stage.
Don't expect the spirit to grab the spotlight.
But with that, don't relegate him.
Don't extricate him from the Trinity.
Don't fail to worship him, to glorify him, to pray to him.
Do those things in accordance with who he is and what he does.
Our problem isn't that we expect too much from the Spirit, but
the wrong things from the Spirit.
The Spirit's never gonna take center stage.
In the Spirit and the Word, you have everything that you need.
I have no idea who's gonna win the Super Bowl.
I have no idea.
I'm gonna watch it.
I have no, no dog in the fight, so it's just gonna be on in the background.
It wouldn't help you if I could tell you this morning
who's gonna win the Super Bowl.
Again, I have no idea when Jesus is coming back.
I hope before the game ends.
Again, I really do.
I have no idea when Jesus is coming back,
but I'm no worse off because I don't know those things.
I'm no worse off because I can't stand up to you and prophesy to you
what's going to happen in another four years at the next election.
I'm no worse off because I can't stand up here and speak over your
life and tell you the trials that are going to come into your life.
And neither are you.
The reason is, is because in the spirit, in the word of God, the
scriptures, we have everything that we will ever need as believers.
Will you stand with me as I pray and then we'll be dismissed.