I'm going to read the beginning of verse fifteen. I'm going to take us through the end of the chapter. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him. But you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. After a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me. Because I live, you will live also. In that hour you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him." Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, What then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words. And the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. You heard that I said to you, I go away and I will come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. Now, I have told you before it happens so that when it happens, you may believe. I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming and he has nothing in me. But so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded me. Get up and let us go from here. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to understand the work of your Spirit. And we pray that he would have his way with us, not just now, but from now on. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen. I've mentioned before the circumstances, but bear with me as I set the picture for where we are again. This morning I'm going to give us a beginning theology of the Holy Spirit with some practical application for us. And I'm going to stick closely to my notes, and it would be helpful if you have your Bibles open as we work through these verses and as we come to a good understanding of some of the work of the Spirit. The scripture is given to us is that Jesus is speaking with his disciples before his death. He's giving them comfort and encouragement. By way of instruction, he is telling them the plan of God and the plans that are going to happen in the next few days and into the distant future as well. The disciples are very confused and they are concerned about what it is that he has to say. They are questioning him. They do not understand. Why is he leaving when they expected him to stay? It's like Judas asking him in this passage, why are you not going to show yourself to the world? They anticipated he would do this. They're told that one of their own number is going to betray him and another leader of their leaders is going to deny him, which makes them anticipate that something is going to happen. of a nature that would prompt them to act in this way. These men have left their occupations to follow him. They had encountered some problems over the past three years, but by and large they had good teachings, spectacular miracles, and all the hard times were outweighed by all the good stuff that they could enjoy. They forsook their occupations in order to follow Christ, and now Christ says, I'm leaving. They expected him to be a king, a king who would be recognized by the other nations. Things are not going to be as they had expected. They do not see in any of their estimation any kingdom, any king, any dream being fulfilled. And so Christ gives them comfort and encouragement and offers an explanation. They don't realize it, but he's going to do something far greater than anything that they had imagined as far as their kingdom goes. This is so much the way God deals with us at times. We are discouraged, and yet in that discouragement, in that problem, as we seek him, as we seek his face, he takes that circumstance and he turns it into something greater for us. He turns it into a blessing to us in any kind of way that he wants to do it. And here he is especially explaining to them the provision that he is making for them with the Holy Spirit who is going to be given to them. He tells them other things that are going to happen. If you look at verse 18, he says, I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you and after a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will still see me because I love you. You will live also. In that day, you will know that I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you. Some people think that's referring to Christ's second coming, but it probably is referring to his appearance after his death, the resurrection. It's talking about how they would see him, that even though they had witnessed his death and witnessed his burial and knew that he was altogether dead, then they were going to see that he was alive, and they would behold him in his resurrection glory. But our emphasis today is upon what he says about the coming of the Holy Spirit. And this actually this instruction about the Holy Spirit continues on into the next two chapters as well. First thing that I want us to understand as far as the work of the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit is one that those who love Christ, those who obey Christ are those who receive the Holy Spirit, those who love Christ. Those who obey Christ are the ones who receive the Holy Spirit. Now, the Holy Spirit is not given to us as a reward. It is not given to us as a reward because we have believed. Our believing is a gift from God. Our repentance is a gift from God. The Holy Spirit is given to us as a gift from God. When you and I believe upon Jesus Christ for our salvation, when we turn from our sins to live for him and no longer live for ourselves, these are things that God has given to us. The scripture describes faith and repentance as gifts. It's like he dumps them in our lap and we use them. If somebody gives you something hot and you're holding it, you have to deal with it right then. He gives, he changes your heart and my heart and he gives you faith and repentance. And you do, you use those things. You believe upon him and you turn from sin. And the gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift to you. It's not because you have earned it. It's not because you've done certain things. It's not because you prayed. He gives his spirit as a gift. And in verse 15, as we spent all last week just about this verse, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Those who belong to Christ, love Christ, they follow Christ, and these are the ones to whom the Holy Spirit comes. These are the ones and these alone are the ones who receive the Spirit of God. So verse 16 naturally follows verse Fifteen, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. You see, it all works together. If you love me, you will keep my commandments and I will give you the Holy Spirit. I will ask the father and he will give you the Holy Spirit. This idea of love and obedience and receiving the spirit is also in verse twenty one. He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him." This disclosure of Christ to those who love him and who obey him is a work of the Spirit of God. Look at verse 23, the same parallel, the same idea. Jesus repeats himself. You and I at times get aggravated at people who repeat themselves. Be careful you don't get too aggravated. Don't get aggravated at all. He repeats himself because we are slow. We need to have repetition. Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, verse 23, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our abode with him. He says we're going to come to him. That's the Holy Spirit. And so you see the connection, you see the consistency here, love, obedience and receiving the Holy Spirit. He makes his disclosure. He makes his abode. God, the father and God, the son, is present with Christians in the person of the Holy Spirit. On Earth, Jesus is called Emmanuel, meaning God with us, and now God is with us. You and I, when we become Christians, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us. The Holy Spirit indwells us as a church. The Bible speaks of this. The Apostle Paul addresses this to the Christians at Corinth, and he tells them there's this double sense in which they have the Holy Spirit. They have the Spirit of God collectively, and they have the Spirit of God individually. And so God the Father and God the Son is with us in the person. of the Holy Spirit. Now, the opposite of this is true. If it is true that those who love Christ and obey Christ have the Spirit, it is also true that those who do not love Christ and who do not obey Christ do not have the Spirit of God. Last week, I went into great detail exposing this lie that people think that they can love Christ and not obey him. Now, I explained all that. I explained about it's not perfect obedience. I went through all that. When you and I think about our failure in obedience, the fact that we're confessing our sins, the fact that we're seeking to turn from those sins means that we're seeking to live that obedient life. OK, so I'm not going to go back there and preach that. But I establish that the people who say that they love Jesus and then they have every intention and they continue to live as they please and do as they please, not repenting of sin, these people have no grounds at all to say they love Christ. They don't love Christ because Christ said that's not the case. He says those who love him will keep his commandments. But we can even go further and say certainly they do not have the spirit of God. Christ goes even further, stating that these people are not loved by the Father and Christ in a certain sense. Now, this is where people get even more upset, but just bear with me, I'm going to work this one out. Look at verse 21. He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my father. He doesn't say that everybody automatically is loved by the father or has a special father's love. But he says that they will be loved by the Father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him. The same thing is in verse 23. Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him. Now, what this is saying here is that there's a sense in which there are certain people God the Father does not love, that he has a special love for Christians. He has a special love for Christians that he doesn't have for everyone in general. People have the bumper sticker, a smile, God loves you. That's true, but it's only it's a limited truth. It's very limited. The Bible says that God loves people in the sense that he treats everyone alike. When you plant a garden and you your neighbor has a garden and your neighbor is not a Christian, God loves Both of you in the sense that he sends rain and it falls on both those gardens. So that's a general way in which God loves us. But the scripture teaches that apart from God, God's wrath is on those who do not know him, that they are enemies of God. Someone says, well, John 316 teaches that God loved the world and he sent his son into the world. Let's look at John 316 and let's see. what that says about the relationship that God has with people. John 3, 16 says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. And so there you have the invitation. There you have the promise that God loves. We could say God loves all nations. And so he invites people to come to him. God loves in the sense that he gave his son. There's a sense in which there is love there. But don't think that there is a relationship that all is well between God and other people apart from Christ, because go on and read what it says after verse 16. Verse 17 says, For God did not send his son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Now, the world is going to be judged. It's not saying that there's no judgment with Christ, just saying that's not in the that was not the mission of Christ's first coming to execute judgment. Christ is going to. execute judgment, but he came to seek and save that which is lost. The scripture says elsewhere, verse 18, Jesus says, he who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment that light has come into the world and men have loved darkness rather than light for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth," this means obedience to Christ, "...comes to the light, so that his deeds may be manifest as having been wrought by in God." So what you have there is you have people, you have a distinction between those who are the Lord's and those who are not. Those who have been loved by Him so as to be brought to Him and those who have not and experience a general love like other people, like all people. Apart from Christ, you do not have the Holy Spirit. People can talk about the Spirit of God and they can make these give these expressions, and I just think the Spirit of God gave me this point. They don't believe in Jesus. They don't believe in the truth concerning Christ. They say they just believe the Spirit of God. He spoke to me and gave me this poem, gave me this psalm. Well, you've got the psalm and you've got the poem, but it wasn't from the Holy Spirit indwelling you. How can you say that, Pete? I can say that because that's what Jesus says. You've got no beef with me. Jesus says, ones who love me, ones who obey me, ones who keep my commandments, these are the ones to whom the Holy Spirit comes. Now, I know we can go into the, some of you may be thinking, well, what do we do with Saul and all that? I'm not going to deal with all that stuff, OK? Let's just deal with 99.9% of everybody right now, OK? Help me. Christ speaks to those who don't have the Spirit, and He calls these people the world. These people here are called the world in this passage, there are people who are not who are not his. And. The point Christ makes is that the one who really see him and the ones who really know him is not everyone in general, but those who. Those who look to him as their savior and their Lord. Let me just make one application here. And that application is that sometimes you who, or we who profess to be Christians, we allow the world to intimidate us. We allow other people, maybe because they have more money or they have highfalutin degrees or they have positions in government or media or something else, whatever. We allow ourselves to be intimidated by these people. I saw one of, I was on the internet doing some, reading a business deal, this was some months ago, and saw the name of this guy who my sons went to school with. And I thought, I wonder if that's the same fella. So I emailed him, and sure enough, he was working for this guy who has this big coaching thing for business and everything, and he was working for him. And and I talked to him, I said, what's like working for him? He said, well, first time I got to know him, he found out I was pulled out something. I had my Bible there and he said, you're not one of those people, are you? And I said, yep, I'm one of those people. And that's the way people treat us sometimes, isn't it? And that's the way sometimes we're made fun of in in in movies and in all kinds of other ways. Those kind of people. Let me tell you something. Don't let anybody intimidate you. Always remember God's Word. Always think to yourself that you are never, as a Christian, you are never to be a person who is looked upon to be pitied. You are a child of God. You are a son and daughter of the Lord God Most High. You are in this little period of time right now looked upon maybe as an idiot and stupid by some people. But you, my friend, are a child of God on whom God has set his love. Now, let me tell you about those people who intimidate you and try to make you feel bad. What does the Bible say? It says these people are dead in their trespasses and sins. The Apostle Paul describes this in Ephesians 2, verses 1 and 2. He says, they live according to the course of this world and according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who works in the sons of disobedience. That's what he says about these people who look down on you. The Apostle Paul says, the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. And so even though our initial response of many times is to be angry at such people and all that kind of stuff, we can try to get our heads on straight so that we can pity them because they are blind and dead and they're following the prince of this world. And they're called in the scripture, not the children of light or the children of God, but the children of disobedience. Don't let anyone rain on your parade for being a Christian. You be proud, proud in Christ. Proud in Christ, not proud that you believe, not proud that you have faith. Proud in Christ, that Christ has loved you. Boast in Christ. Secondly, the Spirit comes to abide forever with and in those to whom he is given. He comes to abide forever with and in those to whom he is given. Look at verse 16. Here's the promise of Jesus. I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. And so the Spirit of God had been with these disciples, inclining them to follow Christ and know Christ. But Jesus is saying there's a special sense in which now the Holy Spirit is actually going to indwell you beyond the ministry that he has had up until this time. This is a disclosure that Christ is this is the disclosure that Christ gave that he said was going to come of himself. In the last part of verse 21, I will disclose myself to him. He will, the Spirit of God is going to make this disclosure. This is the presence of the Father and the Son in verse 23, the Holy Spirit indwelling the child of God. This is the witness that Christ, the witness to Christ that the Spirit would have. You turn over to chapter 15, look at verse 26. When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me. Chapter 16, verses 13 and 14. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He will not speak of His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will disclose to you what is to come. me or he will take of mine and will disclose it to you. Now, later on, we hopefully will see how these promises had particular application to the apostles. But the idea is that Christ was going to give his spirit to those who are his. The spirit would come as to their knowledge and their understanding, their worship and their fellowship, and the spirit of God was to come to them. And the Spirit comes to abide in us as well, to be with us and in us as those who believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Thirdly, the Spirit comes to continue in Christ's place among those to whom he is given. Now, it's not like the Holy Spirit replaces Jesus or anything like that, but let's just think about how it was. Jesus would travel with the apostles. They would go here, they would go there, they would do this, they would do that. Christ would teach them and all this. And now he's saying the Holy Spirit is going to be with you. I'm going to heaven. But wherever you go now and some of you are going to be going in different directions and even though you're going in different directions, I'm going to be with you where you are because the Spirit of God is going to be with you. And this is why you and I can speak of God the Father being with us and God and Jesus being with us, because the Spirit of God indwells us. Christ says, I'm leaving you, but you won't be alone. I will ask the Father and he will send the Spirit to you. Look at the way the word is translated there in verse 16. He will send you another helper that he may be with you forever. A helper is one who would help them now that Christ is leaving. In some places, the Holy Spirit is translated or understood to be called the comforter, they being comforted. The intercessor or the advocate, the Holy Spirit is one who speaks and acts on their behalf. The Holy Spirit would do this on their behalf. The literal idea is one who comes alongside. And so, as Jesus Christ had been alongside them during His earthly ministry, now the Holy Spirit is one who comes alongside them. He's with them. This is why Paul, writing to the Corinthian Christians, tells them, you're a Christian. You have the Holy Spirit indwelling you. You're not supposed to marry someone who's not a Christian. You're not supposed to do certain things because you have the Spirit of God. You're not supposed to act a certain way. That's why you're supposed to have love for each other in the church, because the Holy Spirit indwells you. You're grieving the Spirit of God when you're not showing love to each other like you ought to in the body of Christ. Not with all of our own qualifications about how can we get by by loving the least so that God won't get on our case, but how do we love the way Jesus wants us to love each other? And God's Spirit is grieved. That's what Paul teaches in Ephesians 4. God's Spirit is grieved when you and I allow sin in our lives, when we take our minds and our hearts and our persons into places where we have no business going, when we don't deal with sin in our life, when we're so busy justifying ourselves for why it is we can do wrong and get by with it in given situations, The Spirit of God is grief, and many times the barrenness, the deadness, the dullness, and all this other stuff that we experience in our lives is not because God is absent. It's because we need to repent of sin in our lives and deal with it. We need to take a close look at our lives. We need to swallow our pride and love Jesus more than we love ourselves, because the Spirit of God is grief. We've got to preach grace, and we've got to preach love, but we also have to preach repentance. Many times that's the problem. It's a grieving of the Holy Spirit in the churches, collectively and individually, by the body of Christ. And some of us might think, hey, it's my sin, no big deal. You are wrong. You could not be more wrong. Look at Achan. Look at all the times in the Bible. when God's people were hurt because of individual sin that would not be repented of by individual believers. All right. That's bonus. I didn't have all that here to preach. OK. What else we know about him? Sometimes he translated friend. Sometimes verse 17, he is called the spirit of truth. The spirit of truth, truth is associated with God. Jesus says, what? I am the way, the truth, right? Holy Spirit is called the spirit of truth. How did we get the scriptures? Apostle Peter tells us that the Holy Spirit worked on people repressing their sin. He has given us the scriptures. Here in these scriptures, in chapters 15 and 16, there are promises that are going to be made to the apostles about the scripture that they're going to write. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of And so the Holy Spirit does all these things. He speaks to us the truth. He not only gives us the scriptures, he helps us understand the scriptures, all these different things. All right, let's answer a couple of questions. How do I know if the Holy Spirit is in me and with me? You hear people sometimes, you'll hear certain Christians talk about how they felt this way, and they felt that way, and they felt this way, and they felt that way, and they're supposed to—oh, they're feeling. Define the presence of the Spirit by feeling, okay? Well, you need to define the presence of the Spirit by the Spirit of truth and how He defines the presence of the Spirit. We all have different personalities. Some of us are given more to anxiety. Some of us are given more to fear. Some of us have been raised in that context. Some of us are more touchy-feely than others. Jesus, in talking to his disciples, did not say, OK, let's all line up. Now bring in real big. Now I want you to think happy thoughts. He didn't go into all that. No. He said that they would obey him and they would love him and he would give them the Spirit. He speaks to this factually open. Believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Thou shalt be saved." Romans 8 talks about the children of God being led by the Spirit. What's Romans 8 tell us? It tells us that we're dealing with sin in our life. It tells us we're struggling to live the Christian life. We're making that effort to follow Christ. Listen to what Paul says to the Corinthians Christians. Now, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but by those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. Do you have the Spirit of God? Let me ask you, is Jesus Christ precious to you? Do you love God the Father? Do you believe the truth of His Word that comes from Him? Do you want to praise and worship Him and honor Him? Do you desire to hear Him teach you in His Word? Do you desire to be in His presence in prayer? These are evidences of the Spirit of God. Whether you feel like it or not, some days you may be so down, you may be so dull, you may be so discouraged, you may be feeling so horrible, and the only thing you feel is how bad you are, but you're crying out to God, God, help me! Help me! Please help me! That's the Spirit of God working in you. You're no different from Most of the psalms that you read in the Bible. Almost all the psalms, man, David's got somebody on his case all the time. Sometimes they're from within the church and sometimes they're from outside the church, but he's got enemies out there and none of us are any different. We know the Spirit of God is with us. We have a zeal for his honor, a zeal for his glory. We're jealous for his honor. We want to do His will. We confess our sins. That's the work of the Spirit. You think you got there because you're so good looking? Come on. You think that those things came from the Spirit of God? You want to worship Him? You want to honor Him? You want to know Him? You want to follow Him? That's the Spirit of God. There's a whole world of people out there today that don't care anything about any of that. They have the Spirit of the world. Not the Spirit of God. They're at church, too. It's just not the Christian church. How is the Holy Spirit my helper, my friend, and the Spirit of truth to me today? Well, although the apostles had special revelation, the Holy Spirit is your helper and your friend and the Spirit of truth to you today in much the same way. The Holy Spirit teaches those who belong to Christ as they give attention to His truth, as they give attention to the Scriptures. The Spirit will teach the followers of Christ. The Spirit is not to be grieved, as I said a while ago, with our sin. But He will teach us, and the primary means through which He's going to teach us is through the Word of God. Now, it's great for you to meditate, and it's great for you to pray, but even then, Your meditation and your praying should be governed by the scriptures. So that God teaches us how to pray and God tells us what we're supposed to think about. David, big meditator, OK? What does he meditate on? Meditates on the promises of God. Meditates on how God got him out of all kinds of messes in the past. Meditates on God loving his people and his covenant and all of his promises. Big meditator, but he did it. Because he was basing it all on the Word of God. You and I are no different. How is the Holy Spirit going to work in our lives? We bring ourselves under the Scriptures. We meditate upon His truth. We've got a problem in our life. We've got issues in our life. We've got sin in our life. We've got trouble in our life. We take His Word and we apply His Word. And the Spirit of God works in our lives. He gives us wisdom. He teaches us. He helps us see things. He helps us understand things. He convicts us of sin. He encourages us. He does all that good stuff. He does. This is the experience that you and I are supposed to be having in our walk with the Lord. That we're seeking him, that we're having this communion, this fellowship, this ongoing fellowship. You say, I don't have that. OK. Let's do it then. All right. Now, I'm not trying to be simplistic. Take time to pray. Read your Bible. Call out to God. Tell Him your heart's cold and hard and dull and dead. Cry out to Him for help. And the Bible talks about seeking His face. What's the promise of God? The promise of God is that He'll be found by those who seek Him. You know, we hide from God a whole lot more than God hides from us. You don't play hide and seek. Many times we're hiding more from God than God's hiding from us. But the Lord says those who seek him, they will find him. Now, I'm not saying if you give 30 minutes to it this afternoon and all your problems don't go away that, you know, I've lied to you or anything else like that. God does things in his own time. You know, it's a hard lesson we have to learn, but it's a good lesson for us to learn. And that is that God really is God. Now, I know we like to be God, but God really is God. And so we seek him and he comes to us and he answers us in his own time, in his own terms, and he's never late. Real quickly, what are these other things that we are to say about the Spirit? What about the leading of the Spirit? Well, I just answered that. Well, let's see, the one that comes before, what's the difference today in Acts? We don't believe in special revelation today or continuing revelation. There's some great books that address things like speaking in tongues and continuing revelation, all that I can give us to you. One good one is Charismatics and the Word of God. I think it's published by Evangelical Press. What about the leading of the spirit? I'm just telling you some of the leading of the spirit. As we go to his word. A lot of time, the only thing we know for certain that God's leading us to do is when it's in the Word of God. For instance, if you're on the outs with somebody and the Word of God tells you to be reconciled with that person, OK, go to that person. So that's very plain. That's very clear. You don't have to pray about what to do. You just need to pray for grace to do it, OK? But maybe, you know, you're supposed to change jobs or you're supposed to do this and all that. And so what do you do there? You still pray. And you seek the Lord's wisdom and you can't know for sure because Revelation doesn't continue today, but you can. You have a mind. God gave you a mind. He doesn't have to write it in the sky for you. You don't ask for signs. He's given us a mind. We're made in his image. And so we. think through his truth, and we evaluate our circumstances and all these kinds of things, and we make decisions based upon our understanding of his word and of the situation in which we're in. And that's how the Spirit of God leads us. And there are times when some people think that the Spirit of God is leading them somewhere, and yet he's not at all. The Apostle Paul gives a couple of examples of that in Scripture, of himself. Secondly, what about people who are spirit filled preachers and churches and people and all that kind of stuff? This is that that type of church where, you know, they whoop it up and and work everybody up into a fervor. And and anyway. That's not what we see in Jesus. Jesus did not say. When my spirit comes, you'll have a circus. Jesus said, when my spirit comes, you'll have the spirit of truth. You'll have a helper. You'll have an encourager. Even at Pentecost, when everything was, when speaking in tongues and all that was going on, there was an understanding to these things. There was still some order. What is it that Christ corrected in the church at Corinth? It was the circus that they, that Paul corrected in the church at Corinth. It was the circus that the people had created. The third thing I would say would be inattentive Christians. And by that, I just mean that we're not seeking to know the Lord's will. We're not seeking him in the Spirit's ministry as we should. And then fourthly, I would just say we need to be we don't need to be concentrating on being experienced seekers, but to seek be God seekers. And this is one of the mistakes sometimes that Christians make, we we seek the experience instead of seeking the person. And you and I are to seek the Lord, and when we are in his presence, then we have the experience. OK? God is not some kind of drug that you take, but God is one who gives experience to his people as they are in his presence and as they get to know him. What kind of experience do you want with God? to know his mind, to know his will, to have help in overcoming sin and being more like Jesus, better at self-denial, or do you want to just feel real good? Get you a good piece of pie with a bunch of ice cream on it, a good strong coffee or Coke or something. There's all kinds of ways just to feel good, but there is an experience with God that comes from being with Him, by being in His presence, by knowing Him and enjoying Him and loving Him. And that's what we're to seek. We're to seek the Lord. Isn't that what Isaiah said? Seek the Lord while He may be found. Not seek the experience. Seek the Lord. Seek the Lord. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your Word. Lord, we pray for every person here, every child and every adult. We pray that, Lord, all of us would love you and want to obey you and be filled with your Holy Spirit. Lord, give us quick repentance when we grieve your Spirit. Lord, help us as a church. Help us as a church. Lord, sometimes the things that we say and the things that we do, the things that we write, attitudes we have, they are not pleasing to your spirit. Lord, forgive us. Please forgive us. And please have mercy on us. Don't make us throw up our hands. This is normal, Lord. Help us to see this is normal. We're not in heaven yet. We're a bunch of people who are... We're still projects. And Lord, help us not to be discouraged about that, but to be encouraged that you love us, that you who have begun a good work in us will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. And so, Holy Spirit, forgive us that we grieve you so much and have mercy on us. Have mercy on us. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.