John chapter 14, beginning to read at verse 15. John chapter 14, beginning to read at verse 15. The subject for our meditation later in our service today is growing in the Spirit, and these readings have to do with our Lord's teaching on the Holy Spirit. If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them He is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. Then Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said, But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me. All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things. and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid. Now I am going to him who sent me. Yet none of you asks me, where are you going? Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment, in regard to sin because men do not believe in me, in regard to righteousness because I am going to the Father where you can see me no longer, and in regard to judgment because the Prince of this world now stands condemned. I have much more to say to you more than you can now bear. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own. He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me." We end our reading at the close of this sixteenth verse. We pray that the Lord will bless his word to us all. Amen. series of studies on the subject, what is Reformed Presbyterianism? Who are we as a church? What truths do we hold? What does our church represent? What do we have to offer to a very needy community around us? We come this morning to the sixth of these studies. And we see that we are a people who are growing in the spirit. That is the title of our study this morning, Growing in the Spirit. In the early 1960s, a new movement began on the west coast of the United States of America and began spreading very rapidly. It has been called the charismatic movement. And that movement has become one of the major phenomena in contemporary Christianity. It is well known and has tremendous influence. It shows as yet no sign of weakening. A recent development of the charismatic movement has been what is called the Toronto Blessing, something that perhaps we should look at on some future occasion. And many of our people, when they hear of these things, feel bewildered. They think this is something strange. When they hear of speaking in tongues, of discerning of spirits, of the gifts and enabling of the Holy Spirit, they're puzzled. They say we've heard nothing like this in our own church. And if you were to ask many of our people, what is the teaching of the Reformed Presbyterian Church and other churches on the Holy Spirit? Many of our people would find it difficult to know how to answer or what to say. Some of you might even say, do we have a teaching on the Holy Spirit? I've never heard that subject dealt with much in our churches. Is it not something that we have overlooked? Is it possible that these other churches have come on some aspect of God's truth which we need to hear about? Is it not a weakness in our own church, in our own teaching? Have we neglected the teaching of the Holy Spirit? have these other folk something to teach us. That's not my purpose here this morning, to be critical. I want to be positive in setting forth what I believe to be biblical teaching. What I want to do at the beginning is to make clear to you that it is not at all true in any sense that Reformed churches in general do not have a teaching on the Holy Spirit. John Calvin, one of the great Reformed theologians, was called the theologian of the Holy Spirit. He gave so much attention to the person and work of the Spirit in his teaching. Our Westminster standards are full of teaching in our confession and catechisms on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. We have in the Reformed churches an enormous wealth of doctrine and instruction on the Holy Spirit. I brought just a little bit of it to let you see it, not to show you what books I have, but to let you see it in visible form. 500 pages, The Work of the Holy Spirit. The subtitle is The Work of the Holy Spirit in Our Salvation. John Owen, Volume 3, A Discourse on the Holy Spirit, 650 pages. That's the only subject he deals with in that book. Volume 4, The Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer. as a comforter and the author of spiritual gifts. Volume 6, the work of the Holy Spirit in mortifying sin and in bringing us to forgiveness. There's more. Volume 7, spiritual mindedness, a long treatise there on spiritual mindedness. George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. C.R. Vaughan, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. James Buchanan, the office and work of the Holy Spirit. I could have brought as many more, but you see there is an impression given that our tradition, our churches, have no knowledge of the Holy Spirit, little teaching in the Holy Spirit. And that is simply not true. These men are great masters of the Scripture and of spiritual experience. They are theological giants. They open up for us depths of truth of which most Christians today are ignorant. And I want these books, if you like, to be a visible proof to you that whatever else may be the case, Reformed theology is a theology of the Holy Spirit. A theology of the Holy Spirit. Why then, you might ask, are the charismatic churches making the running, as it were. Why are they known for the emphasis they lay on the Holy Spirit, while we are considered as people who have very little to say about the Holy Spirit? Well, I think the fault is very largely our own. And we have no one but ourselves to blame, especially those of us who are preachers. I as your minister. We have not taught the person and work and gifts of the Holy Spirit as we should. I would have to acknowledge that. We have left a vacuum, an empty space in the mind and heart of many of our people. And obviously nature abhors a vacuum, and if we don't fill it, it will be filled elsewhere. So I'd like to begin today, and we can do no more than that in a short space of time. to at least outline something of the foundation of the work of the Holy Spirit. I'm a little nervous about this sermon because I've packed more into it than I normally do and I hope that it won't give you indigestion as you try to digest it. It's very hard to cover such an enormous subject in thirty minutes or so. So I hope that at least you'll take away something that's clear from it. It's a subject that we'll have to come back to and expand in the future. But what I want to do is to set before you this morning what I understand to be the foundation of the work of the Spirit, that on which everything else is based. And if we can grasp this, it will hold it all together for us in a unity. We can't go too far astray in our thinking and our living. I want to begin by referring to three key passages from John's Gospel which we read. First of all, John chapter 14 verses 16 following. John 14 verses 16 following. I will ask the Father and he will give you another counsellor to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and will remind you of everything I said to you." Jesus there says, the Counselor will come in my name, in my name. and will remind you of everything I said to you." Chapter 15, verse 26. Then the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who goes out from the Father. He will testify about me. That is the essence, our Lord says, of the work of God the Holy Spirit. That is the great theme of his preaching, the purpose of his teaching and his witness. The Son of God says the Spirit will testify not about himself, not about his work, not about his guilt. He will testify about me. about Jesus Christ, the Son. Chapter 16, verses 13 and 14. When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears. And he will tell you what is yet to come. Now note these words. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you." Try and hold those phrases in your minds. He will come in my name. He will remind you of everything I said to you. He will testify about me. He will bring glory to me. So my friends, the heart of the work of the Holy Spirit is Christ-centered. He is the Christ-centered person in the Godhead. His goal and purpose in everything he does is to bring glory to Christ, to focus our attention on Christ, to highlight the Lord Jesus Christ, that we may hear Christ and trust Christ and worship him. This is the Holy Spirit's great delight and purpose. I don't often read quotations from the pulpit, but I have two that I want to read now, a longish one, first of all from John Calvin. Calvin comments on John 16, 14. Antichrists have a common starting point. that in the gospel we are initiated into the true faith, but that the perfection of doctrine must be sought elsewhere. Calvin says the simple gospel will save you, but for perfection of doctrine you need something else. And he goes on, thus by a false claim to the spirit The world has been bewitched to leave the simple purity of Christ. But the role of the Holy Spirit was simply to establish Christ's kingdom. The purpose of the Spirit's teaching is not to lead us away from the school of Christ, but rather to ratify that voice. Otherwise, he would detract from Christ's glory. The Spirit bestows on us nothing apart from Christ, but he takes from Christ what he sheds on us. In a word, the Spirit bestows on us no other riches than those of Christ, that he may bring out his glory in all things. So says John Calvin, a more modern writer, Dr. J. I. Packer. heart and core of the Spirit's work today, the one basic activity to which His work must be related. The Spirit makes known the personal presence of the risen, reigning Saviour, in order that Christ may be known, loved, trusted, honoured and praised. So this is the key to for all Christians to understand the work of the Holy Spirit. And Dr. Packer uses a very helpful illustration. He tells us how one evening he was going to preach in a large church building that he had never visited before in the center of a major city. It was a dark winter evening. Suddenly he turned the corner and he saw the whole church building brilliantly lit up The whole building stood out in every detail. He could see it perfectly. Why was that? Because there were hidden floodlights focusing upon the church and throwing that building into clear relief. Now, says James Packer, the Holy Spirit is like those hidden floodlights. His task, His great joy, is to cast a flood of light upon the Lord Jesus Christ so that we may see Him clearly and all our attention is drawn to Him. When you look at the buildings, says Dr. Packer, you don't say, what wonderful floodlights. You say, what a wonderful building. And so the Holy Spirit's joy is not for us to say, what a wonderful person the Spirit it is to say, how glorious is the Savior. The Holy Spirit is self-effacing. The Holy Spirit, if you like, is self-hiding. His great aim is to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ to us, and in us, and through us. If you keep that in mind, In all your reading and thinking and talking about the Holy Spirit, it will help you. His great task is to make the Saviour more real. To show us the Saviour so that our attention is focused on Him. And all our faith and trust is exercised in Him who came for our redemption. That is His great purpose. I know that that's almost enough for a sermon, but I want then and the remainder of time to mention three ways in which the Holy Spirit ministers in the lives of God's people. How he focuses on the Savior. How we grow in the Spirit. Very, very briefly. Each of these would be a sermon or a sermon series in its own. In the first place, the work of the Holy Spirit is in strengthening in us the fellowship of Jesus. strengthening in us the fellowship of Jesus. The heart of salvation, John 17, 3, that we may know God and Jesus Christ. Now Jesus is no longer here. He is in heaven. His body is in heaven at the right hand of God. But he himself says, I will be with you always. How is the Lord Jesus with us? He is with us by His Spirit, by His Spirit. The Spirit mediates to us, if you like, the presence of our Savior. When we are converted, the Holy Spirit has entered our lives and brought, if you like, Christ to us. And then, day by day, as we live in fellowship with God, the Holy Spirit is strengthening us in the fellowship of Jesus. As you read your Bible every day, in your family worship, and in your personal worship, the Holy Spirit is working. And as we read the Bible, He shows us Christ. He enlightens our minds. He stirs up our hearts. He makes us understand more of who Jesus is, His greatness and goodness, His love and glory. His beauty and grace. The Holy Spirit persuades us that God loves us in Christ. Romans 8, 16. He testifies with our inner spirits that we are children of God. He gives us assurance that Jesus is with us. That He loves us and has saved us. The Holy Spirit prays for us. Romans 8, 26 and 27. When we don't know what to ask for, He is there praying for us. The Holy Spirit enables us to pray in the Spirit. Ephesians 6, 18. Empowering and guiding and directing our prayers. The Holy Spirit enables us to praise in the Spirit. Ephesians 5, 18 and 19. And it might be an interesting answer if someone ever says to you, you don't talk much about the Holy Spirit in your church. It might be an interesting answer for you to say, well, we are the only church in Ireland who sing only songs composed directly by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has written every one of our hymns and psalms. We honour him in our praising God. And so the Lord Jesus becomes real to us. I think this is one of the strong points of the charismatic movement and of charismatic Christians. I think that many of them have a very real and deep awareness of the presence of God and a joy in the presence of God. I think that their lives are often a rebuke to us. Sometimes it's possible to be orthodox but to be cold. But what I want to say to you with all my heart is that if that is the case, we are not true to our own church, to our own teaching, to our own tradition and theology. John Calvin's seal was a burning heart, and his motto was, My heart I offer to you, Lord Jesus, eagerly. and sincerely. That's Calvinism. A man who loves his Saviour. Read the writings of the Puritans and what they have to say about the Saviour. Read the letters of Samuel Rutherford and the Scottish Covenanters. They are in love with Jesus. They express themselves in the most extravagant and emotional ways. They are beloved. They are lovers. and how their hearts are drawn out in passionate affection towards God. Read the writings of Jonathan Edwards. Read the preaching of the great Reformed evangelist George Whitefield. Read the sermons of Charles Spurgeon. These were all great Reformed men. And they were men who felt deeply, who wept in the presence of Christ, who loved Him, who had a passionate passionate desire to know him better. It is not reformed to be cold. It is not reformed to be dead. It is not reformed to be empty experience. If that is true of us, then we are deformed and we need to be revived and stirred up and quickened to have emotion in our worship, to feel these things and to show that we feel that the Lord Jesus to us is a living, bright reality whom we passionately love and joyfully and enthusiastically worship. And if we can learn from other Christians, let us be humble enough and biblical enough to be willing to learn from them. The Holy Spirit is used in strengthening us in real fellowship with Jesus. Secondly, in reproducing in us the character of Jesus. He is the Holy Spirit and his great work is to make us holy. Let me say three things about that. likeness to Christ as our goal. I want to speak particularly to some of you young people at this point. Some of you here today may not yet be sure whether you want to be Christians or not. And one of the barriers to your mind may be us older folk. You may see things in our lives that you don't particularly admire or like. You may think that we're a little bit staid or stuffy, restricted or limited. You may see a lot of things out in the world that are bright and attractive that you want, you want to experience, you want to enjoy. And you think to yourself, well if I become a Christian Does it mean giving up these things? I want to say to you that the goal, the goal of the work of the Spirit is simply to make us like Jesus Christ. To make us like Jesus Christ. And if there are things that are wrong in our lives, the older folks, we're sorry about that. We're struggling too, you know. We're struggling. But don't let it put you off the Lord Jesus Christ. Would you like to be like Him? Holiness isn't meeting a whole lot of cultural norms. Holiness isn't just fitting into the pattern of one generation for another generation. Holiness, we'll be looking at this tonight, holiness is not just a list of do's and don'ts. Holiness is likeness to Christ. likeness to Christ as our goal. Romans 8, 29. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son. And then secondly, obedience to Christ as our law. Obedience to Christ as our law. Holiness means obedience. Obedience to God's commands. It does mean narrowness. It does mean strictness. It does mean self-denial. It doesn't mean an airy fairy doing what you like. But why do we obey? Why do we obey? John 14, 15, if you love me, you will obey what I command. Verse 23, whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. That's why you're to obey God's law. Not because we tell you to. Not because it's a burden or a duty. Because you love Jesus Christ, who gave himself for you on the cross. That's what obedience is. Loving Jesus. That's the only obedience that is worthwhile. We want to obey. We want to please him. It's not a burden to us. It's not a restriction. We're not saying, oh dear, unfortunately God doesn't allow me to do such and such a thing today. That's a wrong attitude. That shows a wicked heart. If you love me, he says, you will obey what I command. If you don't love Jesus, of course you're not a Christian. That's your problem. Likeness to Christ is our goal. Obedience to Christ is our law. And thirdly, imitation of Christ is our method. Imitation of Christ. There is no instant way to become holy. There is no crisis experience which will make you holy. That is a lie. Many earnest Christians have received such an experience, it has been a help to them, but they have laid too much weight on it and have later been grievously disappointed. The pattern laid down in the Bible is that of death and resurrection, dying to sin and living to righteousness, following in the footsteps of Jesus, denying ourselves, saying no to sin and then living to God. And that is a lifelong pattern and a lifelong path. So the work of the Holy Spirit is strengthening in us fellowship of Jesus. Reproducing in us the character of Jesus in these three ways. Likeness to Christ as our goal. Obedience to Christ as our law. Imitation of Christ as our method. And then thirdly and lastly, the Holy Spirit strengthens us in continuing in us the ministry of Jesus. Continuing in us the ministry of Jesus. Strengthening in us the fellowship of Jesus. Reproducing in us the character of Jesus. And continuing in us the ministry of Jesus. The first verse of the book of Acts. has a very significant verb. The book, we are told, is about all that Jesus began to do and to teach. All that Jesus began. That is the Gospel of Luke. The Gospel of Luke tells us all that Jesus began to do and to teach. Jesus is no longer here. He is in heaven. But he is still doing He is still acting and he is still teaching. So in chapter 1 verse 8 he says to his disciples, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit continues in us the ministry of Jesus. And he equips us for this ministry by giving to us spiritual gifts. The Greek word for spiritual gifts is charismata, and the word charismatic simply is the word used for spiritual gifts. So the Holy Spirit gives gifts to us. These gifts are given to every believer. We are all charismatics. In the biblical meaning of the term. We are all charismatic Christians. We have all been indwelt by the Spirit. We have all been given gifts by the Spirit, charismata for ministry. These gifts are varied and they are given to us to use for the glory of God. Dr. Packer again, our exercise of spiritual gifts is nothing more nor less and Christ himself ministering through his body, to his body, to the Father and to all mankind. From heaven Christ uses Christians as his mouth, his hands, his feet, even his smile. It is through us, his people, that he often speaks and acts, meets, loves and saves here and now in this world. Piper is there not confusing us with Christ. We must never do that. We are not Christ, we are not Jesus, but we are also his body, and he works through us. What an absolutely thrilling, exciting idea. Lord Jesus Christ ministers through you and me by His Holy Spirit. We are the body of Christ. My body carries out what my mind tells it to do. My mind says, lift the book. My body obeys. My body is the servant. We are the body of Christ. You are part of the body of Christ. He's ministering through you. That's why he has equipped you with these spiritual gifts. So the work of the Spirit, and I apologize again for a quick and perhaps indigestible summary, but the work of the Spirit is a Christ-centered work, focusing on the Saviour. Strengthening our fellowship with Jesus. Working in us, reproducing in us the character of Jesus. Continuing in us the ministry of Jesus. What a blessed person the Spirit is. How much we need Him in all three of those areas. I certainly do. How much we should pray for his working, and believe in his working, and seek not to grieve him, and to be filled with him, to try to identify those spiritual gifts that he has given us, and to use them for ministry. Do you see how this ties everything together? We have had three subjects in the last three weeks, glorifying the Father, focusing on the Son, growing in the Spirit. These three are not separate subjects, just as the Trinity is not three separate persons, distinct but not separate. As we grow in the Spirit, so more and more we focus on the Son. The most spiritual person is not the person who speaks most about the Holy Spirit. The most spiritual person is the person who has the deepest fellowship with Christ, who is most like Christ, and is carrying on the ministry of Christ in the world. And as we do so, we bring glory to the Father. He, says Jesus, It will bring glory to me. May it be true of us today. Amen. Let us bow in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of God the Holy Spirit. We thank you for his personality. for his power, for the fact that he is everywhere present, indwelling us from moment to moment. Lord, we have grieved him by our neglect, by our lack of faith, by our sin. We would say with David, Do not take thy Holy Spirit away. Grant that we may not quench him, that we may not put out his fire, O Lord, Holy Spirit, we pray that you will so work in us that we may know more deeply, more personally, more joyfully the blessed fellowship of our Savior. We pray that you will work in us day by day to make us more like the Lord Jesus. We thank you that one day your work in us will be completed. And we pray that you will strengthen and enable us to act for Jesus in this world, in our homes, in our communities, in our places of work, in our fellowship, that we may speak Christ's words, that we may do Christ's acts, that we may think Christ's thoughts and be ministers of him to each other. In his name we ask it. Amen. We sing verses 5 to 9 and then the last verse, verse 15. Here in this portion, the psalmist prays that God will guide him, that God will answer him, that God will protect and keep him against all his spiritual enemies. And then at the very last, he looks forward to that time when he will awake in heaven and be satisfied with God's likeness. This is gloriously true of every believer. Verses 5 to 9 and 15. Let us praise God together.