In the Hymn Bible this morning you'll find John 14 on page 1071. John 14. I'd like to begin reading this morning from verse 12. We'll be preaching from verses 15 through 17. This is the Word of the Living God. Please give it your full attention as it is read in your hearing. Lord Jesus Christ says, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do. And greater works than these will he do because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do. That the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you, and He will be in you. So reads the Word of the Living God. May He bind its truths to our hearts. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we come before you this morning grateful for the Word that is before us. Thankful that you have demonstrated such grace to us. That you would, as the sovereign of the universe, reveal your will to us, your truth to us, that we would have an opportunity to know you. that you would lay literally in our laps and in our hands your word that is precious beyond measure. Help us, Lord. Help us to never elevate our thoughts and opinions above your word. Help us never to come to your truth presupposing that our lives are in perfect conformity with it. But give us a spirit of humility, Lord. Like your servant Samuel, we say to you, Lord, speak. We, your servants, listen. We pray that you would do just that today, Lord. Use your truth and your word and the ministry of your Holy Spirit powerfully in our lives today. We beg of you. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, of all of the Puritans or the men of church history that you would hear me or others talk about, I wonder if Thomas Vincent was not a name that you are familiar with. Thomas Vincent, maybe a lesser known Puritan, was born in 1634 in England. He was raised in the fear and the admonition of the Lord and trained as a minister of the gospel and began his ministry in 1654 at the age of 20 years old. After ministering for roughly two decades, he, along with 2,000 other faithful men of God who would not yield to the demands of the Church of England, were ejected, driven from their pulpits, driven from their public ministries. As he continued to minister in those very hostile times, three years later the Great Plague struck London and 68,000 people died in that year alone. And while some of the men who were not ejected from their pulpits, those we call conformists, those who had no problem letting the Church of England determine how and in what way they ministered, they fled, but men like Vincent ran toward the danger. They were ministers who decided at that time to run into the city of London and to preach the gospel in the midst of horrific sickness, knowing that they risked their own lives. Vincent, in the house that he lived, had seven people die. Thankfully, he did not contract the disease and did not die at that time, but he ministered to people on their deathbeds for an extended period of time. He knew what it was to minister in the midst of difficulty, heartache, and in the midst of a society that did not want men like him. In the course of his ministry, he wrote a book entitled, The True Christian's Love to the Unseen Christ. I think even in the title, you capture a bit of the heart of men like Vincent, who even though they lived in dark, difficult times, they had this consuming passion and love for Christ. So much so that that was the, you could say, maybe the one thing that they clung to in the midst of those difficulties was a love for Christ that superseded all other loves. In Vincent's own life, it superseded his love of life, that he would risk his life, risk getting the plague to minister to other men and women who needed to hear the gospel. As he himself met with death, some of his final words were the following. Listen to his heart. He says, Dear Jesus, come and take me away. I have no business left here. My work is done. My glass is run. My strength is gone. Why shall I stay behind? How long shall I be absent from you? O come and take me to yourself and give me possession of that happiness which is above, the vision of thyself, perfect likeness to yourself, full fruition of yourself without any interruption or conclusion. You see men like Vincent Men who've been captured by a love for Christ want nothing else in this world outside of Jesus Christ. Or you could say more than they would want Jesus Christ. And we see in the lives of men like this, and I'm sure Vincent would be the first to say that he was not a unique person. You see in the lives of Christian men and women like Thomas Vincent, this dedication both to love Jesus Christ with all that he is, and flowing out of that love is a unflinching dedication to obey. The Lord Jesus Christ. You see in men like Vincent this union of what we might call love and law. A transcendent love for the person of God. And an unflinching, unwillingness to compromise in your obedience to that same God that you love. They would not, they refused to separate their love for God from their obedience to God. And it's that same union that really lies at the heart of our text this morning. It lays at the heart of what Jesus is saying in verse 15, if you do love me, then you will keep my commandments. That truth has borne itself out in the lives of men and women for 2,000 years. ministers and congregation members alike. You see, there is an importance or an inseparableness of love and obedience in the Christian life, is there not? If we were to have love without the law of God, we would be guilty of indulgence of what we would call antinomianism or lawlessness. It would be a love that was without any guidance, a love without any shape, a love without any borders, a love that was in many ways, I'm sure, destructive and wandering. But then if we were to have law without love, we would engage in legalism. Our religion would be heartless. It would be all form and no substance whatsoever. And so you can see, friends, that law and love have to go together. The one gives shape and direction to our love. The other gives fire to our obedience. We should never separate good friends. And that's what love and obedience are in the Christian life. They're good friends that ought never, ought never to be separated one from the other. I want you to remember the context of this passage. Jesus is in the upper room. These are his final words to his very afraid disciples as they are about to embark on a very difficult life. a life where He is absent from them bodily, a life where it will look like the system of the world is victorious and that they are weak, and yet He assures them that He is with them every step of the way. Jesus wants, in the Upper Room Discourse, chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, and ultimately 17 of John's Gospel, he wants his disciples, and by extension he wants you and I, to sink our lives deeply into the goodness and the grace of God. It's the only way we're going to live faithfully in the midst of a troubled world. And as we encounter these words by Christ in our text, I want to break up our thoughts into three pieces. I want us to look first at the Christian's love. The Christians love and we see it asserted at the beginning or the front end of verse 15. Jesus says, if you love me. And these first words you could say come as a consolation of sorts from Christ to his disciples and ultimately to us as one Puritan said, these words are coming to us as if Jesus is saying, I am sensible, or I'm aware of your affection for me. I never doubted it. I now see it most distinctly." Jesus is looking into the disturbed and troubled eyes of his disciples, and for the first time in this gospel, the believer's love for God is addressed. Oh, we've talked much of love in John's gospel. We've talked of God's love for the world in John 3, 16. We've talked about God's divine electing specific love for his bride. We've talked about Christ in chapter 13, that he loved his people to the end. Christ, the husband, love for his bride. We've spoken at length about that. We've seen in chapter 13 verses 34 and 35 that as Christians, as those who've been changed by the gospel, we are to have love one for another. In fact, that's our greatest testimony to the power of the gospel. So we've seen God's love to us, our love to each other, and yet in John's gospel, we've yet to encounter our love for our God. We're beginning in verse 15, we find it. And it's a theme that John will continue to run with throughout the upper room discourse. The believers love for Christ. The believers love for his God. And maybe it's too simple of a thing, it's too obvious of a point, it lies on the surface and may seem not profound whatsoever. How important is your love, Christian, for your God? How easy would it have been for us to light over those words and miss that at the very heart of who you and I are as believers in Jesus Christ, at that heart of what it means to be a Christian, has to be a love for Jesus Christ. a passion for who he is, a relational affection, a zealous desire for the person, not the idea, the person of Jesus Christ. Isn't that at the heart of what it is to be a Christian? If you were to encounter a Christian or a person who says, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ, I'm a Christian, yet I have no love for Christ, you would say, then friend, you're not a Christian. You lack what is most needful in the definition of being a believer. You've no love for Christ. We hit here upon the most important aspect of our faith, our love responsibly to God. And while we would say that this is a very important aspect of us being Christians, you might ask, well, is it important to God? Is it important to God that the Christian have a vibrant, zealous love for Him? Well, absolutely. Revelation 2 verses 2-4, the risen Christ says to the church of Ephesus, I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are in enduring patiently, and bearing up for my name's sake. And you have not grown weary." If we were to read that and say, this is a exemplary church. They're doctrinally sound. They test teachers. They don't put up with evil persons. They endure. They are patient. They seek the name of Christ and His honor. They don't grow weary in doing good. They have all of these marvelous things that we wish would be true of us, and yet what does Christ say to them? But I have this against you. You've abandoned the love you had at first. Or you could say, you've abandoned your first love. Is it possible to have marvelous doctrine and yet a cold heart? A full head and an empty chest? Absolutely. Is it possible to have all of your theological T's crossed, I's dotted, and yet still have something immense lacking? Yes. It occurred in the church of Ephesus and it can occur in the church on the corner of 132nd and 100th Avenue. It can occur anywhere. Friends, our love for Christ is not a small theme in Scripture. It's not an incidental theme. It's not something that he could take or leave. It's something he requires from his people. There is no substitute. I want you to hear me on this. There is no substitute for heartfelt, robust, zealous love for Christ. There's no substitute. You might say, well, I struggle with a cold heart to Christ, and so I'm going to beef up on theology, or I'm going to beef up in this other aspect of my Christian life, maybe obedience in a certain avenue. I will make up for the lack. I will substitute something in place of a lack of love. And friends, that is not possible. There is no substitute for a lack of love for Christ. Some of you suffer as I have. Your spouse has this thing against gluten that has come out of nowhere in your experience. And she tells you that this thing, the garbanzo beans or whatever it is, is a substitute for flour in bread. And it's the same. It's bread. It's the same thing. And they've substituted in something other than flour for bread. And this thing that comes to your plate, called bread, has the density of a black hole and the dryness of a desert. More odious than garbanzo bean flour. is a lack of love or a substitute for love in our life. No, she doesn't make great bread. I'm mainly teasing. But we think we can substitute something for our love and God won't notice. We think it's the same thing. We think it's just as acceptable in His presence as our love. And friends, it's not. It's not. We can't buy Him off. We can't tell him that this is just as good as our love and he won't know the difference. I love the words of William Cooper. He says, Lord, it is my chief complaint that my love is weak and it is faint. How often do we examine our own hearts and say, I do not love him as I ought. I do not love him as I ought to love him. And we strike upon any time, whether it's a confession of sin, private prayer, or a time where we're just meditating and thinking through our own lives and self-examination. How easy is it, friends, for our hearts to grow cold toward God? If we could just speak honestly with each other here for a moment. How easy is it for us to have our heart that seems one day to be on fire for the Lord, as though every beat was for our God? And before you realize it, coldness has crept in. Indifference rules. We let off the watch for a moment, and we relax, and the world creeps in. We let off private prayer for a day, two, three days. We're busy, we make excuses, and just leaving off something as seemingly insignificant as private prayer in the morning, and we wake up and our hearts are cold. Our hearts are so easily chilled by the winds of the world. Our hearts are so easily cooled in their affections for God, for the risen Lord. And I would ask us this morning, how do we go from that place where we say, I recognize in myself the importance of a love for Christ. And I recognize in myself how easily my heart is cold to God. How do I, don't just tell me that, don't tell me it's important and I don't have it. Tell me, how do I get it? How do I grow in this? We find something very interesting in Luke chapter 7. Jesus is speaking to the religious leaders of the day and he asks them a question regarding forgiveness and love. He forgives a woman who has been guilty of many sins. And his point at the end of that illustration is who loves more, the one forgiven little or the one forgiven much? Religious leaders, Properly answer that well the one who's been forgiven much surely love would abound there And she said you said you've said it, right? The point is don't go to sin so that there's more to be forgiven That's not the point the point is have an accurate understanding of the enormity of the sin for which God has forgiven us and Have a proper view of what a wretch and worm we were that God would save us. And how many sinful thoughts, deeds, words, and actions has my God forgiven me? And having a proper view of the enormous amount of forgiveness that has flowed into each and every life here that has been forgiven by God. Love will then spring. Remind yourself that we are those who've been forgiven much. That would be one answer. The second would be in how do I nurture and grow a love for the unseen Christ? It would be to gaze upon the beauty of Christ as he's revealed to us in the Gospels. Just let yourself read and take in the person and the beauty of Jesus Christ as He is explained to us and shown to us and illustrated to us on the pages of Scripture. Don't read your Bibles out of cold duty. Read your Bibles in pursuit of a man, the man Jesus. And ask over and over again, who is He and what is He like? Never was deceit found in His mouth, and He is beautiful. Always was His heart moved with compassion, and I therefore love Him that He is moved on compassion in my life. Just gaze upon the beauty of Christ, and your heart will follow. But if we don't know Him, we cannot love Him. If we don't pursue Him, we will never find Him. And so, friends, pursue. and gaze upon the beauty of Christ as He's described to you. Drink in who He is, what He's like, and what He's done for you, and read His words. Words like John 13, 1, having loved His own, He loved them to the end. Read of how much Christ loves you, and your heart will follow. Those are two examples that I would give to begin cultivating a heart for the Lord. Private prayer is integral. So many other aspects are irreplaceable. But begin with those two. And I would ask you, not by show of hands or answering back to me this morning, but what are you doing? Maybe jot this down as a question and ask yourself later this evening or this afternoon, what are you currently doing to help cultivate the love for Christ in your life now? What are you actively doing where you're saying, I know it's important. I know my heart is prone to coldness. What am I doing to stoke the fire of my zeal for Him? It's important to Him. As John Brown says, it's not as though he looks at you this morning and says, you don't love me at all. He's saying, I see the love you have for me. I see love in your heart for me. I see love for the risen Christ in you, Christian. Grow. Grow. I know that you, maybe you're sitting here this morning saying, I don't love him as I ought. That is true, but friend, you do love him, don't you? Grow in that love for him. Grow and nurture the flame of affection for Christ. But this love doesn't stand alone or doesn't stand on its own two feet. It is always and ever accompanied by obedience to Christ. So we'll see secondly this morning the Christian's law. We see first the Christian's love and now secondly the Christian's Genuine, spirit-worked, Christian love for Christ is always to be accompanied by obedience to the law of Christ. Look at it in verse 15. If you love me, and the way in which he even phrases this in the Greek assumes a yes answer. If you love me, and you do, Keep my commandments. So the idea is continue to keep. Grow in keeping. It's present. Always be engaged in this activity which is the keeping of my commandments. He says in verse 15, he calls them commandments, plural. In verse 23, he says the keeping of his word, singular. In verse 24, he says words, plural. And so maybe you're asking, well, what is? What are these commandments? What is this word? What are these words? What is it exactly that Christ is telling me in verse 15? I need to have my life consumed with keeping of these commandments. What are they? I think Puritan John Brown sums it up perfectly, and so I won't even try to add to it. He says, what is called in this verse, my commandments is, the whole revelation of the divine will, respecting what I am to believe, and feel, and do, and suffer, contained in the Holy Scriptures, this is the law of Christ. If I could summarize what he says, if you were to just take the word of God and say, Lord, as you've revealed your will in your word, what am I as your child as a believer, what am I to believe? What am I to feel? What am I to do? What am I to suffer or endure? All of it is revealed here for the believer. That is the commandments of verse 15. That's the word of verse 22. Those are the words of verse 24, the revealed will of God in the scriptures. not following fanciful feelings, not following what I discern in my own inter-thinking to be God's will at a particular time, what He's revealed in His written Word. That is what we will call the Law of Christ. That is the compass of the Christian life. You see, friends, this is how in pursuing the love of Christ and flowing out from the love, we find the obedience to the law of Christ. We see them working together, don't we? If you have a heart that loves God, you will then dig into his word and see how we can serve him best. What do I need to believe? What do I need to feel? What do I need to do for your glory and for your name? As we've said, love keeps the law from being cold and burdensome, and the law keeps love from being shapeless and without direction. When we read those words from Christ, we have to ask ourselves on the onset, is perfect obedience then required? He says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Is he saying, if you look at your life and you see that you don't perfectly keep all of the commandments of God, are you then devoid entirely of love? I don't think that's what he's saying. I think instead of saying perfect adherence, only one has ever perfectly kept the law of God, and that was Christ. It was Christ on our behalf. It was our representative head, Jesus Christ, perfectly fulfilling every single aspect of God's law for those who couldn't, for you and for me. But what Jesus is saying in verse 15 is more speaking to the trajectory and the direction of your life. And I found four words or defining words to be helpful in thinking through what obedience to the law of Christ should look like in a believer's life. The first would be that we ought to keep, that we obey what He has said implicitly. It means that we do it for the very simple fact that God has commanded it and said it to be true. We don't obey out of false motives, you could say. We don't obey with ulterior motives. We don't live a Christian life because the life expectancy might be longer, we'll raise better kids, our life will be lower on the stress spectrum. You don't obey God's law with that purpose in mind. Those are benefits, surely. But if you keep God's law, it is because He is God and I am not. And what He says, I do. not with any weird ulterior motive. We follow his word implicitly. The second word would be we follow his word impartially. We follow it impartially. We do not get to pick and choose which aspects of the law of Christ we obey, and those we'll ignore. Deuteronomy 11.32 says, you shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I'm setting before you today. The Word of God is not a buffet in the sense of we get to pick and choose the pieces that we would like to obey and those we don't want to. He has said it. He has said it for our good. He has said it for His glory. We impartially obey Him. Don't pick and choose the easy ones and leave the difficult ones. Don't say, I will follow God in these areas of my life, but not this area. In this area, I am the sovereign. That is not Christian obedience. The third word would be cheerfully. Obeying Christ is viewed as a privilege, not a burden. Because we love Him, it is a privilege, or there's a cheerfulness, a joy in obedience, rather than it being burdensome. If there was no love, and these were rigid rules that we had to obey to a sovereign that we didn't love, yes, they would be burdensome, they would be cold, but that's not the case. We love Him. These laws and these Things that we ought to obey are for our good, because he's a good God who loves us and cares and protects his children. Therefore, our obeying of the law of God ought to be cheerful. It's okay to smile sometimes. I know the irony of that, because I smile very little up here, but you need to smile more. I ask the kids who draw pictures of me while I'm preaching, why do I always look mad? They say that's how I really look. I'm smiling on the inside. Obeying the law of God should be cheerful. It's okay to enjoy obeying the Lord. The psalmist says, let your mercy come to me that I may live for your law is my delight. He says in Psalm 19, the rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. The psalmist says it's like the sweetest delicacy at our disposal is the law of my God, why he loves me and I love him. and therefore his law is not a burden to me. It's a joy. It's a joy to be under the rule and the reign of the Lord Jesus. So we're to keep it implicitly, impartially, cheerfully, fourthly, perseveringly. This is not seasonal. This is not for short stints obey Him and then take vacations off of obeying Him. This is not, kids, listen to me, this is not a thing that you do when you're older. This isn't a, well, I'll live as I like and then when I become adult and life becomes boring, then I will start following the Lord. This is not seasonal. This is to be the pursuit of every person who is called by the name of Christian perseveringly in all seasons and not taking vacations off of the obedience of the Lord. Spurgeon says love is the chief jewel in the bracelet of obedience. I love that relationship that Spurgeon puts in there. The one who loves the Lord will find joy in the pursuit and obedience of God. And so I would ask you to, again, jot down a question to ask your heart today or right now, if you like. What are you doing to grow and flourish in your obedience for Jesus Christ? Take an inventory of your life. What are you doing to grow and flourish in your obedience to Jesus Christ? John Brown says, believe Jesus Christ to be what his father's testimony declares him to be, and you will find that you cannot help but love him. And you cannot help but obey Him. If He really is who the Word says He is, then two things should spring forth from you, believer. Love and obedience together. The difficulty is, I mean, many of us here this morning have children. We expect, can, a greater level of obedience from our kids to us than we expect from us to our God. If we could just be kind of bitingly transparent here this morning. There are times where I ask of, well, not both of my children, but the one who can answer back, how many times have I said, and can hear in my own mind, as it were, my conscience saying, how many times have you heard God say, and yet you are likewise a disobedient child, How many times do we have one standard of obedience for our children and a different, more relaxed one for our personal obedience? The one thing I would say is we can't obey if we don't know. If we're not in the Word, we can't know what the will of God is, we can't know what God's law is, we can't know what He requires of us. And so, you need to be in the Word, Christian. You need to be in God's Word. And not as a check-the-box endeavor, as in a, my God loves me and wants me to obey, that I would flourish as a believer, that I would glorify His name in all respects. Sinful, top to bottom, and so I need to know what my God says. That's a very different reading than, I need to read two chapters in 1 Samuel this morning. Okay. That's a different endeavor altogether. Do you know the Word of God? And I know your answer is yes, but not as well as I should or as I would like to. Grow. Study. Be a master of one book. as long as it is this book. Pour your heart and soul into saying, what does my loving, holy, and righteous God say for me? I don't want to know what the world wants me to do. I don't want to know what my flesh wants me to do. I want to know one thing. What does my God, whom I love, want from me? How am I to use my mouth for His glory? How am I to use my hands for His glory? How am I to use my feet and all that I am, my finances and my time, my family and my job, my talents? How am I to use that to express the love I have for Him? His Word will tell you. His Word lays it out. Know it. Be diligent to study it. Maybe you're sitting here this morning and saying, Pastor, I have tried to grow in my love and obedience for Christ all of my Christian life. And it seems like the harder I try, the more I fail. Seems like the more I more effort I put out, the I fall short. What is there to do? Do I just continue to try? Is this a try harder kind of sermon? Is this a pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just do it? Well, I actually think Christ answers that in the text. And so we'll see thirdly, the Christian spirit. I don't mean the spirit that comes from the Christian, but the spirit that's given to the Christian. The Christian's spirit. Christ has not left you and I without any aid whatsoever to pursue a zealous love for Him and pursue uncompromising obedience to Him. It's not as though He said, here's two very difficult endeavors and you're really sinful and not able to do it on your own. Good luck. He says, I'm going to send help your way. And we will introduce the person of the Holy Spirit this morning, and he will spend the rest of chapter 14 and much of chapter 16 expositing for us who the Spirit is. This is an introduction to the Spirit in this text. Look what he says, verse 16, And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another helper, one to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth. The word used there, if you have any kind of different translation on your lap, you might see words like helper, another comforter, an advocate, a counselor. There's lots of different ways the English is translated this, and there's a reason for that. The word parakalētos is very hard to capture with one word. Some verses even say the paraclete, which doesn't help me because I don't know what a paraclete is. It's like if you have one cleat and two cleats, you now have a paraclete. Not at all what John's talking about. Paraclete only works if you lived in the first century and spoke a lot of Greek. What does this word mean? It literally means to be called alongside of. It means a legal help from a friend. It means one who comes as an advocate and a counselor, as legal defense. It's the word used of Jesus in 1 John 2, 1. But we know that we have an advocate with the Father. We have one who shares flesh and bone with us at God's right hand, one who pleads our case, an advocate, a paraclete. We have Jesus Christ helping us. Well, he says here, I send another. And even the way he says it, the sense is I will send another of the same kind. Not another and he's different, another and he's the same. And the sense is what Christ has been doing and accomplishing in his ministry to the 12 thus far, the Spirit will continue that same advocating, counseling, comforting, Ministry. And when you see comforter, this is actually a great word to use to describe it. Not comforter like a soft blanket and a box of Kleenex. Comforter as in one who calms in your weakness and distress and strengthens you. One who comes to you when you are weak and discouraged and ready to throw in the towel and strengthens you and builds you up again. That sense of the word comforter. He's one who builds his people up. He comes to the aid and the assistance of his people. He comes, verse 16 says, as a gift asked for by Christ of his Father for you. It's as though Christ is saying to his disciples, you are going to need help. Help is on its way. And even though you are distraught, because Christ says, because I'm going to the Father, do not be distraught. Do not be afraid. The Spirit of truth is coming. He is everything I've been to you. And in some cases, more. He will dwell within you. The Spirit comes to each individual Christian as a gift from Christ to help. And in Him we have all the help that we need. He comes as a counselor, as an aid, as an advocate. And like I said, over the next several weeks, we'll be slowly, don't worry, we'll be slowly unpacking each aspect of the Spirit's role in the life of the Christian. Verse 17, He's the Spirit of all truth. He's not a spirit of the world. The world doesn't receive Him. The world doesn't know Him. This is a unique gift to the people of God. You know Him. He dwells with you and He will be in you. Notice the language of proximity here. This help. Is it far off and inaccessible? No. Is it intimately close and readily available? Yes, He is. The Spirit is in each Christian who's been born again and regenerated by that Spirit, given strength, given power, given comfort, so that we can, by His grace and by His help, grow in our love. for Christ and grow in our obedience to the law of the Lord. J.C. Ryle says, but they are all that are. They are new men. This is talking about the work of the Spirit. We are what we are because of Him. We are new men, new creatures, lights and salts in the earth compared to the world. Why? Because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. There's a reason why we are called saints in the Bible. There's a reason why we are called new creatures, new men, light and salt. There's a reason why the Bible can speak as it does, because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He comes to strengthen. He comes to fan the flame of our love for God. in our hearts. He comes to enliven our love for God. He comes to strengthen and give direction to our obedience to God. He comes to convict us of sin when we are off of the trajectory of the law of God, when we break away from what God has for us and we delve into sin and we delve into the flesh. He convicts us of sin. He's the Spirit of truth and He turns us lovingly, graciously, patiently back to the Father. So friend, if you're here this morning, and you're discouraged, and you say, my love isn't what it ought to be, my obedience isn't what it ought to be, be encouraged. Help has come. Christ has sent His Spirit into your life to be that advocate, to be that helper, to be that comforter, to be all that we need to grow in love and obedience to our God. Christ has not left us alone in this world. He'll say in the next couple verses, I have not left you as orphans. I've not started and abandoned you. I am with you through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, you can have hope of growing in your love and obedience to Christ. That's good news. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you. Thank you for your word. Thank you that you have given us your spirit to guide us to all truth, to enliven our love for you and to strengthen our resolve and our obedience to you. Lord, we need help in both. We look at our own hearts and we see weakness. We look at our own strength and it is weakness. We look at our focus and our determination. It is wrought with distraction. Lord, please, by your Spirit, help us. We pray to you, Holy Spirit, that you would, in each believer, in their heart, would you And live in our love for Christ. May burn brighter and hotter than anything we feel for the world. Would you give us strength and endurance and patience and focus to obey you? That when sin and temptation come to draw us away from your law. Our love would constrain us to you. That we would say with the Apostle Paul, the love of Christ controls us. And we would walk in obedience. Lord, we can either love you nor obey you of our own strength. So please, Spirit, help us in our weakness. Help us to love and obey you as we ought for your glory, not for our comfort. For the glory of your name, we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.