And you pray that word back to the Lord. King David had that. He spoke of it in this psalm, and he spoke about my reins. Now, I was perplexed at what the reins might be. You think of the reins of a horse, or the reins of a donkey, reins that you lead an animal. But the reins here, the Hebrew is the kidney. It's the deep, inner recesses of our being. And he is saying, my inner soul you instruct in the night season. That's the voice of the Lord in the soul of the Christian. Welcome to Let the Bible Speak. This is Ian Golliher, pastor of Our Free Presbyterian Church. Thank you for joining with us as we bring to you the message of the gospel. And we're moving today to John chapter 14 on Tested, Tried and True. That's the love of the Christian will be tested, Praise God, it can be tried, found to be worthy, and proven to be true. I hope that's true of your heart and of your life. We have a hymn today, All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name. and we also have a little word from C. H. Spurgeon on the church. Let's read now from John 15 and verse 15. If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not. neither knoweth him, but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you, let it yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more. But ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also. These are the words of the Lord Jesus. May they be a great blessing to your heart. Now the hymn, All Heal the Power of Jesus' Name. O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, Welcome to Let the Bible Speak. This is Ian Golliher, and what a joy to bring you the message of the gospel, and I hope that your new year is already going well. With the Lord on the throne, with our trust in Him, surely the future is as bright as the promises of God. The Bible says, in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. So that means that we pray. It means that we search His Word, that we want to know the will and the mind of God, and we want it to be written on our hearts and minds, and given grace to follow and serve the Lord. Now, the challenge today is to serve the Lord in His church. Let me ask you, did you go to church on Sunday? Are you a member of a Bible-believing church where Christ is exalted? where his gospel is preached, and where prayer is offered for the light of the gospel to shine into this darkened world, we need to be active in our service for Christ. And surely that is a great theme for this new year, to be an active Christian, not just one that is sitting on the fence, but one that is busy serving and seeking to exalt the Lord. Today on Let the Bible Speak, we have part two of the message, What is the Church? And we're trying to define and to discover how we may worship God in his church biblically, that we may do it for his glory, and that the blessing of God may be upon our service for him. Again, we have some quotes from Mr. Spurgeon on the church, and I hope that this will also be a challenge to your heart. Al Smith will sing, Be Thou Exalted, and that's really what it's all about. to exalt the Lord Jesus. So stay tuned with us right here on this program as we let the Bible speak today on exalting the Lord in His church. Coming up now is the message. I trust you'll stay tuned. I have a list of verses on that one. But I want to move on now to the onward blessings of conversion. You've got the inner, inward test of conversion. That's loving the Lord. You've got the outward test of conversion, keeping His words, desiring His will for your life. And then thirdly, the onward blessings. Look at the fruit of this. Back in our text, verse 23, If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode or dwelling place with him." We're talking here about special privileges. To those who love the Lord and keep his word, who seek his will for their hearts and lives, there are blessings. The first one I discover here is, my father will love him. That means my Father will love him in a special way, as in 1 Samuel, them that honor me I will honor. And you can seek that, you can expect that, that when your life is a life of loving the Savior, delighting in his word that the Father will love you and he will bless you. Secondly, the Lord Jesus and the Father will make their dwelling place in your heart, in your life. You'll notice that the Lord moves from the singular, my Father, to the plural, we will come. Well, what a mystery we have here. The unity between the Father and the Son. And so the blessing of the Father is now united with the blessing of the Savior, and we will come and make our abode. My, this is deep. This is bottomless. This is infinite. This is undoubtedly the deeper life. J.C. Ryle wrote, eminent holiness brings eminent comfort with it. If you want to know the comfort of the gospel, you need to be pursuing holiness and inviting the Lord into your life. Now in verse 21, there's another word used. It's the word manifest. It says, and my father shall be loved of my father, and I will love him and will manifest myself. And that is what got Judas stirred up. Judas came in with a question. Not Judas Iscariot, it's the other Judas. And he said, Lord, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us and not onto the world? Someone wrote that if everyone knew what was in the heart of man, they would marvel that the Lord would manifest himself to anybody. But he is pleased to reveal, to declare the inner secrets of Christian life to them that love him and them that obey him. and they learn the deep secrets of the Lord. So do you want clearer views of your Lord Jesus? Here it is. Do we want the heartburn that the men on the road to Emmaus experienced that the Lord opened up their understanding to the Scriptures? Here it is. And again, I ask, what is this like? What might we expect to experience if the Lord does come and manifest himself, revealing the inner secrets of the Christian life to our souls and to our hearts? What might we experience? Well, as you look at these verses, you certainly can say we become assured of the Father's love. Do you know how many professing Christians that battle lack of assurance? They know it, but they don't feel it. They profess it, but they don't know the power of it in their souls. They believe in prayer, but they don't get much out of prayer. They are people of the book, but they miss the blessings of the book. That's the sad reality in the Christian world. Now, many of those are true Christians. Many of them are going to be in heaven. They have what we would call a credible profession of faith. We can accept them as brothers and sisters in Christ, but they live a life of very low assurance. They live a life of walking the clean side of the road, but not really entering into the sweet, blessed experiences which the Lord has for his people. This manifesting, we're not only assured of the Father's love, but we are assured of personal visitations of the Lord to our souls. Now think about this. This is grace. This is the Lord coming, dwelling, living, working, speaking, ministering to the depths of our souls. We might call it a conscious awareness of his speaking voice. I came across a hymn, and I was looking for a hymn to help us with this, and the author is Esther Wigglesworth. God sets a still, small voice deep every soul within. It guideth to the right and warneth us of sin. If we that voice obey, clearer its tones will be, Till all God's will for us clear as noonday we see. If we that voice neglect, fainter will be its tone, If still unheeded it will leave us quite alone. O grief, to be allowed to go our own wild way. Lord, hold thy children back, lest we sadly stray. And one more verse. And help us to attend to thy sweet voice divine. Then in the judgment day, own us, good Lord, as thine. Now I like that hymn because it puts into prose that there are these high moments versus these empty void experiences in your life as a Christian. There will be those times when you will know the Lord deeply, personally ministering to your heart. It can happen in church, hearing His Word. It can happen when you're alone reading your Bible. It can happen as you pray or as you talk with other Christians. You feel that draft of grace uplifting your soul out of the doubts and the fears into joyous, happiness. Oh, there is true joy, true happiness to be experienced by the child of God. But if we are not sensitive to that voice and we turn a deaf ear, we lose its tone. We walk alone. And if you feel tonight that you're walking alone, You need to take this verse, and I would say, firstly, memorize it. Get this word into your heart. I have gone to this text time and time and time again, and the Lord has used it to revive and strengthen my own heart. The Lord had made great promises to his disciples. He said, my joy I give unto you, not the joy of the world, but my joy. And then if you go down to verse 27, the Lord said, peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. And this is what the Lord saved you for. This is what the Lord wants his children to enjoy, peace. But it's not just any peace. There are Christians who are looking for the peace of the world. There are Christians who are trusting in peace that comes through money, materialism, popularity. That's transitory, that's temporary. But Jesus gives peace, His peace, my peace, I give unto you. Now, it belongs to Jesus because He bought it at the cross. Jesus purchased peace by his own death and blood at the cross of Calvary. It's his to give. And it's peace with the Father. Jesus never spent a day out of sync with his Father. Every day was a happy day, a holy day. a close walk with God, and he says, I give my peace unto you. And we've got to rejoice and rest, taking great delight in that. And so we are assured of these blessed onward comforts within our souls. Now these are difficult things to preach because they are better felt than told. They are richer in heart than we can ever put into words. That's why devotional thoughts are so valuable. When we learn what the Lord is doing in the hearts of his people. We have some examples, of course, in Isaiah, when the Lord was high and lifted up, and Isaiah said, Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips. And the Spirit of the Lord, he cast himself on his face. Then I read of David, King David. Psalm 16, 7. I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel. My rains also instruct me in the night seasons. Does the Lord ever visit you in the darkness of the night? In a sleepless hour, you toss and turn, and something of the Lord's word stirs in your heart. and you pray that word back to the Lord. King David had that. He spoke of it in this psalm, and he spoke about my reins. Now, I was perplexed at what the reins might be. You think of the reins of a horse, or the reins of a donkey, reins that you lead an animal. But the reins here, the Hebrew is the kidney. It's the deep, inner recesses of our being. And he is saying, my inner soul you instruct in the night season. That's the voice of the Lord in the soul of the Christian. And just as the Lord Jesus taught his disciples here, John 14, and look at verse 26, the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things. And so this is the experience of being Spirit taught. It is something that's not contrary to truth, but it is communicated by the Spirit, and it's written on our hearts. Everything that you need to know to live the Christian life, the Holy Spirit will teach you. He will teach you. That's His work. That's His ministry, the paraclete who comes alongside to teach us these things. That you and I might enjoy communion with God. That we might have real heart-to-heart fellowship with God. And we should seek this in private prayer. I trust you do pray alone. There's no better place to learn to pray than to pray alone. There's no hypocrisy in private prayer. There's no seeking to impress men when you're in private prayer. Do you ever notice how people in prayer meetings, they sort of give God a history lesson before they ask anything? Well, when you go in private prayer, you don't need to do that. You're not informing the person in the meeting of anything. You're alone with God. And you ask for the Spirit of God to teach you, to instruct you in the way. But also do it in the church prayer meeting. We learn to pray from older saints and those who do pray. I remember in my early Christian life going along to prayer meetings in Oma Church, where the Reverend Mercer is going to be installed this Thursday evening, by the way. And if you're on Facebook, you can check in live. This is the newest way of communicating things going on, live video from the church service. It will be 8 p.m. there. It will be the noon hour here. So noontime on Thursday, you can check in. And that's the congregation where Beulah and I found the Lord, or the Lord found us. And coming amongst Christians as an 18-year-old, I heard the heart cries, the prayers of Christians, mature Christians. Others were new Christians. And I remember my first attempts to pray, they were stammering words, but I wanted to join in the prayers of God's people. If you do not know that and enjoy that, you miss the heartbeat of the church, but you also miss the place where the Lord meets with his people. Pray for the Spirit's power to pray. We need His help to pray. It's the most challenging aspect of our Christian lives. Lord, teach me to pray. That's how the disciples came to the Lord Jesus. Teach us to pray. And we need to go to the Lord seeking power in prayer to become men and women who really know God. Now I'm going to close with this little quote. The Lord here repeats, this is verse 23, comment. The Lord here repeats that God has fellowship only with those whose hearts welcome Him, who love Him, and whose love is manifested by submission to His Word. Then he loves them in return. Now, I know in election, God loves us first, but when we walk obediently in his word, the father will love us and he and the Lord will come unto us, make their dwelling place with us. What a glory. This is the inner sanctuary. Our bodies now are the temples of the Spirit. And the Lord lives in us and walks with us. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, But I can't help myself. my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieve. Thou fairest child In the trace of you, In all my paths we lead. I'm ♪ With the angels' choirs and snares ♪ ♪ I have already come ♪ ♪ Tis grace hath brought me here ♪ and grace will lift me up. You are listening to Let the Bible Speak, the radio broadcast of the Free Presbyterian Church in Canada. This is Pastor Ian Golliher. If you missed part of today's program or would like to hear it again, you can find it archived by program date on our website. Just go to www.ltbs.ca, C-A for Canada. There you can read my blog, find my Bible study notes, audio and video sermons, as well as helpful articles. Or you can go to our podcast on iTunes. We're on the air Sundays at 9.30 a.m. for our full church broadcast, and Monday to Friday, 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. on this station to bring you the gospel from our free Presbyterian Church here in Cloverdale. We also invite you to our church services on Sundays 10 30 and 6 pm. Through our website you can listen and view to our online services at 10 30 and 6 pm. make it your Sunday worship. Click on the Live Now button on the home page of our website. Or if you would like to talk with me one-on-one as a pastor, please give me a call. The phone number is 604-897-2222. 2-0-4-0. The mailing address is 1-8-7-9-0-58 Avenue, Surrey, B.C., V3S 1M6. We're located just two blocks north of Number 10 Highway on 188th Street. Our website again is ltbs.ca. You can join us Monday to Friday, 5 a.m. 5 p.m. here on this station as we Let the Bible Speak.