The Holy Spirit and Believers

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[Prayer] Father, we thank Thee for the privilege of the study of Thy word again. We thank Thee for the Gospel of John and especially these last words that the Lord Jesus gave to the eleven as he prepared them for the time when he would not be with them in the flesh. Enable us Lord again to profit from our time as we ponder the words that he gave to the apostles. We do rejoice in the preservation of the truth and count it Lord an inestimable privilege that we are able to read the Bible, the word of God, so many centuries after the time that the truth was given through the Lord to the apostles. Enable us to give ourselves in the truest spirit that is subject to the spirits teaching to the ministry of Thy word. For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

[Message] We’re turning tonight to John chapter 16, and our subject is “The Holy Spirit and the Believer.” In our last study we considered the Holy Spirit and the world and primarily his ministry of conviction of sin, righteousness and judgment, and now in verse 12 through verse 15 of John chapter 16 we have an emphasis on the ministry of the spirit toward the saints. I am sure that in your reading of the word of God you have many times been told, if you’ve attended Believers Chapel at least that the Lord has both a finished and an unfinished work. When we speak of his finished work we speak primarily of the blood that was shed at the cross of Calvary and the atonement that was accomplished by the shedding of that blood. Now that is his finished work, and it is finished because there is no further need for any atoning work.

The Bible also speaks of unfinished work of our Lord Jesus. For example, his unfinished work includes his intercession for the saints. And so at the present time he’s engaged in constant intercession for us. The Bible also speaks of his advocacy in behalf of the saints so that when the saints sin he exercises his ministry of advocacy. And among the other aspects of his unfinished work is his ministry of teaching, and that is the subject that comes before us in this section to which we are to look, John chapter 16 verse 12 through verse 15. It is the teaching ministry of our Lord through the spirit that this passage stresses. Now I think that we should, to be absolutely accurate, refer to this as our Lord’s teaching ministry because it is clear from the words that I shall read that the spirit acts as a kind of mediator between the Lord who originates the teaching and the believer. And so it is the work of the spirit to take the ministry that our Lord gives and to illumine our minds through that ministry. So it is really Christ’s teaching ministry through the spirit. So it is proper for us to speak of this as part of his unfinished ministry.

“He shall glorify me,” he writes or he says in the 14th verse, “For he shall receive of mine,” or from me literally, “And shall report back to you.” So the work of the spirit then is to take from Christ the things that believers need and to report them to the believers. I’ve often referred to this and, for the sake of those of you who are new, let me repeat it. Many years ago when I first attended theological seminary it was the custom of Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer to give in the first week of the first semester, and he had to do this every year because there was an entering class every year. It was his practice to take the chapel sessions at Dallas Seminary. And in these opening sessions he would speak to us four times, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and his topic was the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit, generally speaking. And in fact the same messages were given every year. I can always remember the passages year after year because I heard him give them about eight or nine times. When I was on the faculty I sat behind him and that was the only difference. Earlier I had sat before him four times, and then about five or six times afterwards sitting behind him.

But I can remember one particular rather striking statement. It was a striking statement to me the first time I heard it. In the light of the fact that on the platform Dr. Chafer spoke behind a little rector, a little desk something like this, it was really a music stand, and on the platform was the rather limited faculty of about ten men in those days. But he would begin this series of messages by saying, “At Dallas Theological Seminary we have a faculty of one.” Well you didn’t know whether Dr. Chafer was speaking about himself as the only real teacher in the crowd. [Laughter] There were some that contended that that was probably true. But it was a striking, a little puzzling, statement until he went on to say that, “When I refer to the faculty of one at Dallas Seminary, I refer, of course, to the Holy Spirit.” And he would talk about the spirit’s teaching ministry and how it was necessity of for us if we were to profit from the work at the seminary to be in submission to the Holy Spirit who was the one teacher. Well it was a very good lesson. And it’s a lesson that we all ultimately must learn. The Bible is a book that is taught by the Holy Spirit to those who are spiritual, ideally. And as we shall see in our later studies, the degree of spirituality to which a person has come does have a direct reference to the truth that he is able to receive.

Well let’s look now at our passage. And first we want to notice the limitation of the disciples to which the Lord refers in the very first verse. Verse 12, of chapter 16, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Now remember the context he has just said in the preceding context in chapter 15 and chapter 16 that the time is coming when he is not going to be there, but the Holy Spirit will be with them and they are to receive the ministry of the spirit as he testifies to them of Jesus Christ. And then they are to bear witness because they have been with him from the beginning. That is the last statement of the 15th chapter. And then in chapter 16 he has spoken of how the Holy Spirit when he is come he will convince the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. So the context would suggest to us that the disciples need this instruction in order to become useful to the spirit for the work of convincing the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. We said in our last study that the Lord will convince the world of sin, righteousness and judgment through the believers. The context makes that plain. He does not do that without instrumentality or without means, but he convinces the world of sin, righteousness and judgment through those whom he indwells in the spirit. So this context then suggests that the disciples need the teaching ministry of the spirit in order that they may be useful means in the spirits hands for the work of convincing the world of sin, righteousness and judgment.

Now he says he has many things to say unto them. This is really a pre-authentication of the rest of the New Testament. We have in chapter 14 and verse 26 a kind of pre-authentication of the gospels, “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” So he says there that the Holy Spirit will remind them in the time to come of what he has said to them in his earthly ministry. But here he refers to things beyond that. He says, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.” So, the spirit will remind them of the things that he has taught them, but he will go further than that. He will speak to them many things that they are unable to receive at the present time. And, of course, those many things are now enshrined in the New Testament because that “many things” is a reference to what he taught the apostles, and particularly in the forty days ministry after his resurrection and which we now find enshrined in our New Testament. So the “many things” then is a reference to the remainder of the New Testament primarily.

Now this is a rather interesting point because it is customary among some liberals to say that the Apostle Paul’s teaching is contrary to the teaching of Jesus Christ, and the liberals frequently have said we prefer the teaching of Jesus to the teaching of Paul. And so they talk about going back to the gospels and back to the simple teaching of Jesus or back to the ethical teaching of Jesus because they do not like the stress that the Apostle Paul makes upon the atoning work of Jesus Christ and particularly such things as the penal substitutionary atonement.

Now this is interesting in the light of these words of our Lord Jesus because if we are to be a follower of the Lord Jesus and say that we are not going to accept the things that the apostles taught but be content with what he taught then we’re in direct contradiction with the Lord himself because he said, “I have many things to say unto you, and I cannot tell you them now.” He will tell them that later on. So the idea that we should go back to the words of our Lord and downgrade the ministry of the epistles is contrary to the teaching of our Lord Jesus himself. So, “I have yet many things to say unto you,” and we are to understand by this a kind of pre-authentication of the New Testament.

He says that, “They cannot bear them now.” That verb “bear,” translated “bear” here is a rather unusual word. It’s the word that means to bear a burden. It’s the word that was used of the carrying of the cross of the Lord Jesus. So when he says, “I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now,” it does not refer to mental unfitness but rather to moral unfitness. They are unable to bear them now. Their experience sets a limit upon their ability to live out the implications of this revelation that he would like to give them. So they are unable to bear them in the sense that they are morally unfit at this moment for the receiving of the teaching that he desires to give them.

Now verse 13 follows with a kind of declaration of instruction, “Nevertheless when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak from himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.” So the spirit’s coming is going to lead to instruction and empowerment. “When he, the spirit of truth, is come,” you know of course that it is customary among certain professing Christians to affirm that there is no such thing as a personal Holy Spirit. Now it’s not an easy doctrine to prove to a person who wishes to believe that the Holy Spirit is simply an influence. But there are things that are said about the Holy Spirit that indicate that he is a person. He, for example, there are attributed to him certain emotions that are emotions that belong to people and not to things. For example, the Apostle Paul says, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.” I’ve always found it impossible to grieve an influence, but you can grieve a person.

So there are indications of the personality of the Holy Spirit in many of these statements such as that one. But we have further evidence because we read, “When he, the Spirit of truth, is come,” and the word translated “He,” is a demonstrative pronoun in the masculine gender. Now that is interesting because the term spirit in Greek, now Greek does not have natural gender as we have, if we see something that’s feminine we say she. If we see something that’s masculine we say “he”. But now the Greeks had what we call grammatical gender. That is certain things that are masculine might be neuter in gender because they did not follow natural gender. Now the word for spirit, for example, is neuter. So, always spirit will be neuter. It’s an “it.”

But now the spirit may be masculine or it may be feminine depending on the contexts. I’m not speaking about the Holy Spirit, but spirit. But in this case we have the personal pronoun which indicates that the neuter term spirit is a masculine spirit, sorry ladies, not feminine, unfortunately. “Nevertheless when he,” that one, that masculine one, “the spirit of truth shall come.” So the conjunction of the masculine demonstrative pronoun and the neuter term spirit so close together indicates that the Lord Jesus regards the Holy Spirit as a person. It would have been very easy for him to say not, ekeinos, the masculine, but ekeino the neuter since it is so close to ta neuter pneuma or neuma. So the fact then that we have, “When he, the spirit of the truth, is come,” we have, I think, an indication of the fact that the Lord Jesus regarded the Holy Spirit as a person. So when we think of the Holy Spirit we do not think of an influence. We think of a person. Now that has great significance for us because the Holy Spirit has come to indwell every Christian, and so in his indwelling we are to think not of an indwelling of an influence but the indwelling of a person, a divine personality indwelling every single believer, “When he, the spirit of truth, has come.”

The Lord then says, “He will guide you into all truth.” Now this verb means “to guide in the way,” literally. That really is the derivation of the term to guide in the way. It’s found only twice in the Gospel of John, or rather in the Johannine writings I should say. It’s found in Revelation chapter 7 and verse 17 in the passage that refers to the Lamb leading them from waters to waters. And it is found in one other place.

Now it is a word that means to guide in the way. Do you remember the time when Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch had their encounter? The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem in order to worship, but evidently he had left unsatisfied. It’s possible that he heard the debates between Stephen and the Jewish leaders there and had probably been impressed by the spirit and wisdom with which Stephen spoke. And so he left, and he left with a copy of the Book of Isaiah. I rather like to think that he was so impressed by the things that Stephen said as he sought to prove that Jesus was the Messiah that he went to the book store in the city of Jerusalem and acquired a scroll of the Book of Isaiah in the Greek text.

Now I only say in the Greek text because the type of use of the Old Testament that we find in the Book of Acts chapter 8 relates to the Greek translation of the Old Testament rather than the Hebrew text. So it would appear that the quotation follows more closely the Septuagint or the Greek text of the Old Testament than the Hebrew text.

But he was reading this and you remember that Philip was in the midst of a very fruitful ministry in Samaria, but the Holy Spirit called him away from that. Called him down into the desert from Jerusalem to Gaza, and he arose and went and he saw the man of Ethiopia on his chariot going home reading the Book of Isaiah. And so the spirit said to Philip I want you to go near and join yourself to that chariot. And so Philip ran, and he ran, isn’t it interesting to see the providence of God, he didn’t walk, he didn’t say I’d hang over here by this stone until he arrives, but he ran. And he ran in such a way that he arrived there just as the Ethiopian eunuch was in the midst of Isaiah chapter 53, of all the chapters, the greatest of the Messianic chapters of the Old Testament. There he was reading Isaiah 53. And so Philip ran up to him and with a little bit of tact, he said, “Understandest thou what thou readest?”

Now the way in which he expresses that, incidentally, in the Greek text is, he uses a rather rare particle in the Greek text which expects something of a negative reply. It’s an interrogative particle, and you could translate it something like this, “Do you really understand what you’re reading?” As if to suggest, “No he probably doesn’t understand.” But he’s nice. He doesn’t say, “I know you don’t understand what you’re reading,” but “Do you really understand what you’re reading?” And so the eunuch replies, “Assuredly, how should I?” And he uses a rather common particle with a slightly unusual sense, “Assuredly, how should I?” Well how can I really understand it except some man should guide me? And that word guide is the very word that our Lord uses here in John chapter 16, “When he is come he will guide you into all truth.” And so you know the story. Philip got up into the chariot with him and right at that very point he began to preach to him the Lord Jesus, and he was converted. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to guide us in the way.

Now let me think about this word with you for just a moment, “to guide.” What is suggested by “guiding into the truth?” Well the first thing that is suggested be it is that the enlightenment that we receive from the Holy Spirit is a gradual kind of enlightenment. So we should expect in our Christian experience not to be able to open the Bible and understand everything in it immediately. He will guide you into the truth. Now guide is a word that suggests a gradual illumination. That is the experience; I’m sure, of all of us here. In fact, a lot of people are really puzzled by that. They are converted, and they begin to read the Bible. And you frequently hear them say, “I don’t get anything out of it.” And one of the first crutches that they try is to run off and get one of the modern language versions and blame it on the Authorized Version.

Now let me assure you, it’s alright to have a modern version, but hundreds and thousands and millions of people for years have been able to understand the King James Version, and I understand it very well. I don’t have any difficulty with the King James Version. And I don’t really think that other people would have much problem with it if they really read it. But what the experience they have is they have started reading the Bible, and they’re not getting too much out of it and they’re looking for a reason. Surely it’s not because I’m not intelligent enough. So we eliminate that possibility.

It must be because it’s written in archaic language. Well there is a lot of archaic language in the King James Version, but not enough to mean that it’s not a book that is clearly understood. It’s making good sense to me right now. “When he, the spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” That’s not very archaic. That’s very pointed, very good. Many things in the Authorized Version are extremely good. You see the problem often is not the Bible from which you are reading. The problem is you’re a babe. You’re just starting out, and you’re reading words, but the Holy Spirit is not giving you illumination of everything that you read. He guides you into the truth.

I speak for myself. I’m still learning the word of God. There are many things that I do think I understand about the Bible, but I’m still learning. Every time I open the Bible, or at least every time when I’m in my right mind, I do say, “Oh, God through the Holy Spirit, illumine my eyes,” for to understand the word of God is a gradual work of the Holy Spirit throughout all of our Christian experience. He will guide you into all truth. So don’t get discouraged if you cannot read and understand. Go get your modern version and read. But in the final analysis you’re going to need the illumination of the Holy Spirit, and he will give you illumination, but he will do it at his own pace because he knows the best pace at which you should receive the Scriptures.

The second thing that is involved in the word guide is that it suggests a response. It does not say here that he will bring you into the truth. It says he will guide you into the truth. And when you think of someone guiding another person, you think of them taking them by the hands and leading them. A response is involved. Now I’m not suggesting that God, the Holy Spirit, does not give the response to us. He does. But there is response upon our part. So he will guide us. He will take us by the hand through the Scriptures. And we should ask the Lord to enable us to respond to the word of God as we read it. The final thing that this word suggests is that this guidance is never ended as long as we’re here upon the earth. He will guide you into all the truth, or in all the truth.

Now let me just make one technical comment. In the original text, when the text states, “He will guide you into all truth,” the Authorized Version reads, “into all truth,” I didn’t look at any of the other versions before the exposition tonight and my memory would play me tricks if I tried to guess, but I have a hunch that some of the versions read, “He will guide you in all truth.”

Now the reason for that is that in the Greek text the word that follows guide is, in some of the ancient manuscripts, “into” and in some of the others it is “in.” Now in the Authorized Version it reads, “He will guide you into all of the truth.” And that’s the translation of the Greek word “eis.” But it’s my own opinion, at this point, that the Greek text that has more possibility of being the original reading at this point is the word, “in.” So, “He will guide you ‘in’ all truth.”

Now if it means he will guide you “into” all of the truth then the point is he will enable you to penetrate all aspects of the truth, including those that they cannot bear now. He will guide you into all the truth, that is, the truth you know as well as the truth that you at the moment cannot know. But if it is to be rendered, “He will guide you ‘in’ all truth,” it means simply he will be your guide as you study all the truth in the years to come.

Now personally I think that is what is meant. “He will guide you in all the truth.” You will never exhaust the truth, but you will be guided as long as you live in the sphere of the truth of God. Now that means that our lives really as believers should be lives in which we are growing in the knowledge of the word of God. You’ll never do it if you don’t read the Bible for yourself. You’ll never do that. You’ll never grow in understanding of Scripture if you’re not willing to sit down and spend some time allowing the Lord Jesus to speak to you in the spirit.

One of the nicest things about living in nineteen hundred and seventy-nine is that we have all the benefits of the study of the Scriptures that has taken place down through the centuries. The Holy Spirit has taught the Christian church for nineteen hundred years. Old John Duncan used to resent the habit of some people referring to the earliest Christians as the fathers. He used to say, “The fathers are not the earliest Christians following the apostles.” True we call them the apostolic fathers, but they’re not really the fathers. We’re the fathers because we have the benefits of these centuries of study of Scripture as taught by the Holy Spirit as he’s taught the Christian church, and this information is found in our commentaries and other books about the word of God. And consequently, we, if we apply ourselves to the Bible and apply ourselves to the study of it and respond to the spirit’s teaching, we are the fathers. We have the benefits of all that they have learned.”

Robert Rainy who was principal of New College at the University of Edinburgh at the first part of the 20th century said, “Elementariness is the signature of all the early literature. What the apostles and some others of their generation taught is one thing. What the church proved able to receive is quite another.” And he went on to point out that the early church did not have the power to receive, and now, as a result of the spirit’s teaching for nineteen hundred years we have vast amounts of the truth of God that has become plain to us. That’s why you ought to read commentaries on the Bible. That’s why you ought to listen to the men who have gathered this truth together and seek to convey it to others. It’s the stupidest thing in the world to say I’m going to study the Bible only for myself and not listen to anything that anyone says in a commentary. That is a stupid attitude. In the first place it’s arrogant. It says in effect, I don’t believe the Holy Spirit has taught anybody anything significant in the nineteen hundred years previous to my appearance on the earth. And consequently I don’t need anything that he has taught them. That’s really what it says. That’s arrogant, and it’s usually the very person who says that who most needs to get out and read what others say and forget what he’s saying about the Bible because what he’s saying is usually chaff. Listen to what God the Holy Spirit has taught the great men down through the years. That information is available to us. It’s God’s gift to us. He’s given the Christian church teachers.

Isn’t it a strange thing that a man can stand up? I’m not talking by the way of something that’s not very common in the Christian church. You’ll find it. But isn’t it a strange thing that a teacher can get up and say, “Don’t pay any attention to any other teachers,” particularly if they’ve died. If they’ve died don’t pay a bit of attention to them. Study the Bible for yourself. What arrogance and what denial of the Bible. God has given us teachers to listen to, and we can listen to them in living form, half living form, like myself, [Laughter] and in the things that they have left for us in their books.

One of the clues of how good a man is in the interpretation of the word of God, one of the keys is his library. Take a look at his library. Now I’ve known some men that have a very good library that cannot preach a lick. [Laughter] I do know a few like that. But I’ve never known a real good preacher who didn’t have a pretty good library, unless he’s preaching the same half a dozen messages over and over again through the years.

“He will guide you in all the truth.” Now the Lord says, “He shall not speak from himself.” Now that means he shall not speak of himself. The source of his teaching will not be the Holy Spirit. The spirit will not teach of him, from himself. “But whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.” The teaching will not originate with the Holy Spirit. “He will not teach on his own authority,” as the Revised Standard Version renders the phrase. He shall teach what he hears, and what he hears comes from the Son or the Father. So the Holy Spirit is not the originator of the truth. The Lord Jesus is the originator of the truth. “He will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears, that he will speak.” You see the subordinate place the Holy Spirit takes to the ministry of the Lord Jesus to the believer.

Now the reason I added the Father there is because the Son says that some of his words, in fact all of his words in his incarnate state, came from the Father. So it is the Holy Spirit’s activity then not to speak from himself, but to take the things of Christ and report them to us.

Now I’d like to make a couple of points by way of application here. You can see that truth is not by man’s discovery. Truth is by God’s disclosure. We don’t come to know truth because we have discovered it. We come to know truth when we are open to the spirit’s disclosure of the truth to us. The truth comes to us by illumination. It is given to us in the Bible by revelation. But the revelation is understood as the Holy Spirit following the direction of our Lord illumines the revelation found in the pages of the word of God.

Now if it’s true that the Holy Spirit is our teacher from the Lord, then it’s important if we are to understand spiritual truth to rely on the Holy Spirit. That means that truth is not dependent ultimately upon the size of our intellect. The understanding of the truth of God is not dependent upon our brilliance and perception. It’s not dependent upon our skill in the original languages. It’s not dependent upon our aptitude for practical aspects of the truth. It’s not dependent upon our personality. It’s not dependent upon our platform poise or anything like that. To understand the Bible is ultimately a matter of listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit as he brings the things of Christ to us.

Now that means that every one of you sitting in this audience can understand the Bible. And not only understand the Bible, you can understand it well. There is a tendency on the part of some people to say I don’t know Greek, and therefore I cannot understand the Bible too well. Foolish, that’s foolish. I know a lot of people who can read Greek, and they don’t understand much about the Bible. And I know a lot of people who don’t know one word of Greek for certainty, and they understand the Bible very deeply. In fact, it’s not hard at all to understand the Bible, and understand it well, if you just do two or three things. First of all what you need is a few different versions, Authorized Version, New American Standard Bible, Revised Standard Version, New International Version, a Phillips, a Weymouth, a few of those. And then you need to develop by reading an ability to grasp the general force of a context.

Now if you have these versions you will almost always be able to determine the different possibilities of meaning because one version will take a passage a certain way whereas another one may take it another way. And from that you’ll learn that there these two possibilities of rendering.

Now the sense of a passage depends upon usage and context. In other words, in the final analysis it is what does, which understanding of the text is supported by the context. And so what does that involve but simply a reading of the context over a number of times and pretty soon you’ll be able to say, well here are two ways to render this evidently because Weymouth renders it this way, and the New International Version renders it this way, but the context seems clearly to support this interpretation. And I will say to you that ninety-nine out of one hundred times that will be the correct interpretation, and whether you know Greek or not, you will be able to arrive at the meaning of the text. Do not think that for one moment that you have to take Greek in order to understand the word of God. Now Greek will help you in that little one percent, or half of one percent and it may shorten the time, but it is not an essential for understanding the deep things of the word of God. All that is required is a little perspiration and submission to the Holy Spirit. That’s all that’s required. Now that ought to be a challenge to you, and I’m saying this because I want to encourage you to study the Bible for yourself.

Now he says, “He will show you things to come,” verse 13. Now these are future things, but the question is are they future from the standpoint of the upper room discourse or are they future from the standpoint of the author as he wrote this in approximately, well let’s say 90 to 95 AD or at least the time when he wrote the gospel? “He will show you things to come,” if things to come is a reference to the things that are future from the standpoint of that little upper room discourse that our Lord was delivering then we have the whole Christian system in its developed form which was future when the Lord Jesus spoke here. It’s possible that that’s the meaning. If it’s future from the standpoint of the author then the reference would be to prophesy. I’m inclined to think the former is the meaning. And when he says, “He will show you things to come,” he does not mean simply prophetic teaching, but he means the things that are coming following my death, burial, and resurrection. And all of the teaching of the present age found in the Acts and the epistles, and the Book of Revelation is included in “He will show you things to come.”

Well he explains the instruction in the last two verses. In the light of the present state of evangelicalism with its flirtation with the Charismatics, the theme of these verses, the work of the spirit, is very significant because you will see that the work of the spirit is Christocentric. That should be branded upon the tongues of the tongues movement. [Laughter] The work of the Holy Spirit is Christocentric not Pneumatocentric not spirit centered. Let me show you. “He shall glorify me.” By the way think of a man saying that. Suppose our Lord is only a man. Let’s just suppose that. That’s what many modern theologians tell us. He’s only a man maybe with a little different potential than the rest of us, or he’s measured up to his potential a little better than most of us. But if he’s only a man, think of this, “The Holy Spirit shall glorify me.” Suppose I were to say to you, “The Holy Spirit, when he’s come, is going to glorify me.” How foolish. You’d know that something was the matter with S. Lewis Johnson, Jr. But the Lord Jesus is able to say, “He shall glorify me,” because he is more than a man. It’s very fitting that he should say, “The spirit shall glorify me.”

Now I want to say to you that the chief work of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Christ so all of our preaching, all of our teaching, all of our Christian expressions are to be Christocentric. Any kind of preaching that is not Christocentric is not biblical in that respect. “He shall glorify me.” So any man, any movement that glorifies self or the Holy Spirit is false to the Holy Spirit himself. So when we have a whole movement that glorifies the Holy Spirit, it’s out of touch with the central teaching of the New Testament and of our Lord himself. The spirit glorifies Christ. You can see that so beautifully illustrated in Romans chapter 8 which some have called the chapter of the Holy Spirit, but in it, it begins with our Lord, it concludes with our Lord, and in through the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, it is our Lord who is glorified by the Holy Spirit. And you remember when Abraham’s servant sought a bride for Isaac? It’s a beautiful illustration of the Holy Spirit’s work incidentally in seeking the bride for Isaac. What does that servant, that unnamed servant, incidentally, unnamed servant of Abraham do? What does he do? Why he glorifies his master. He talks about how Abraham has given everything he has into the hands of Isaac, and he glorifies the son. What a beautiful illustration of the Holy Spirit. That’s what he does. He glorifies our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now he says, “He shall receive from me and shall show it unto you.” That’s a word that means to report back, apaggello. So he shall glorify me for he shall receive from me, he will listen, the Holy Spirit, and he will report back to you. “All things that the Father hath are mine.” Think of a man saying that. “All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.” He shall report back to you. So, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to glorify our Lord. He listens as the Lord Jesus Christ gives the teaching that the believers needs. He hears these things from our Lord’s lips, speaking now anthropomorphically, and he comes back to the saints of God, and he reports to them the things that the Son wishes them to understand as they ponder the word of God and read it, seek to understand it.

What we have in the Bible is a situation very much like the first settlers who landed on the shores of the United States of America. All of the vast potential of this continent they knew nothing about. They knew a little bit about the eastern sea board for a lengthy period of time. They knew nothing about the vast and beautiful parts of the United States excluding Texas, that are found throughout the rest of the country all the way out to the Pacific, but as time has gone on the land has become explored. That’s very much like the Bible. The Bible is the word of God. We have the teacher to teach us the truth. The Lord Jesus guides us in the sense that he gives us the things that we need, and through the spirit illumines the pages of the word of God.

May God help us to respond to the teaching, to listen to the voice of the spirit, read the word. Ask him for the teaching that is needful for us in our own particular time of spiritual life. May God help us to take advantage of the great work of the Holy Spirit in teaching. Let’s conclude our session with a word of prayer.

[Prayer] Again Father, we thank Thee for this wonderful portion of the teaching ministry of Christ in the spirit. Oh God enable us…

[RECORDING ENDS ABRUPTLY]