Christopher: Do you want to know if the spirit is present somewhere? Do you want to know if the spirit is working somewhere? Don't look mainly for spiritual experiences. Don't look mainly for signs and wonders. Don't look mainly for big claims about what God has done or what he's told me or what he's shown me.
Look for Christ. Look for him displayed. Look for him proclaimed. Look for him lifted up and treasured by his people.
Caleb: The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Christopher: We're going to turn back to first John as we continue our work through this epistle. We've been in this now. This is the fourteenth sermon in this book and I want to give a bit of a review of the context into which John is writing just to refresh our minds about that. We don't know a whole lot about the specific congregation or the specific location. We can make some guesses, but it's not specified in the text.
But what we do know is that John is writing to a group of believers whom he has taught. They kind of look to him as their teacher and for this group of believers false teachers have come in to that group. False teachers have come in to that local body and they've begun to claim an authority and to speak on behalf of God. They're claiming an authority against John and the other apostles and they're speaking, so they say, on behalf of God, on behalf of his truth. And what this has done is begun to unsettle the congregation there that John's writing to because a number of people have gone and followed these other teachers.
So just put yourself in that position. You've got a congregation and your teacher is kind of distant. He's away, the main guy you're looking to. Some other people are coming in saying, hey, I'm speaking on a higher authority. I'm speaking for God.
And people you know and love have gone off to follow them. There's been this kind of destabilizing that has taken place, and the people that John is writing to are a little bit uncertain of what's going on. There's been some existential destabilizing. They're thinking, wait a second, wait a second, where's the truth? What about why did they leave?
What's going on here? And into that John is writing his epistle. Now you see something similar to this kind of it's not one to one, but you see something similar today when people claim an authority that is outside of what we see in Scripture. When somebody comes to you perhaps and says, Hey, have you read the book of Enoch? Have you read the the Gnostic Gospels?
Have you read this secret authority? You're missing out because you haven't read this secret authority, this special authority. Or when somebody uses the God told me card and says, Well, God told me you need to be doing this. God told me I need to receive this. God told me that when there's this God told me kind of essentially putting their own words on par with scripture, you've got that same kind of thing going on where there's other authorities being brought in to destabilize the flock of God.
Or you get it sometimes when somebody has an issue that for them is the issue. This is one thing when it's a person, a lay person or whatever, but when it's a teacher this can be very confusing. If somebody has one issue and all the other ones have to fit around this, whether it's a scientific finding or a political theory or particular fears about the culture and where things are going and where society is going, people can get this fixation and that becomes the main thing, and unless you're thinking about this, unless you care about this, you're missing it. And everything has to orbit around this thing here, including Christ, including the gospel, even though they might not explicitly say that. There's situations that we face where some other authority is being brought to bear and we as Christians are called to say, where's my authority coming from?
Where, how do I know the truth? How do I know where I'm supposed to go? I'm feeling destabilized. And it's into that destabilization that John is writing. And we saw last week, he writes to re stabilize this congregation.
Last week the way he was doing that was by calling them to let the word of Christ abide in them. Let the message about the slain and risen Jesus as proclaimed by the apostles, let that live in you, and you through that live in the Lord. So that's what he called them to that last week. This week he's going to continue this restabilizing effort by pointing specifically to the work of the Holy Spirit. And it's fitting that we come to this text today because you may or may not know it.
Today is Pentecost Sunday. The Sunday after, remember, after Jesus rose he spends forty days with his disciples and then he ascends and then the gathering after that, the Holy Spirit descends upon them and begins the missionary work of the church, begins arguably the what we have now as the expression of the church, though God's people have been from the beginning. But this is Pentecost Sunday, so very fittingly, we are focusing today on the work of the spirit. So let me read for you our passage and then I will pray for us. It comes in first John chapter two verses 26 through 27.
So John says this, I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you, But the anointing that you have received from him, that is from Christ most likely, the anointing that you have received from him abides in you and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him. Let me pray for us. Father, it is to this anointing, to this spirit that we appeal now for your grace. Lord, that the Holy Spirit who breathes the words of scripture, who illumines the scriptures that they become effective and transformative in the lives of the church, the Holy Spirit who unites us together as one body in Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit who takes from the fullness of Christ and makes that known to us. The Holy Spirit who is given to your people and is the living and active power and presence of the risen Christ in our midst. Father, we pray that your spirit would be at work now to make these words of of scripture and to make the words of my attempt to unfold scripture. Lord, to make these things effective in the lives of your people. I'm always struck, Father, by how many needs are here, and you know them all.
You know every need present in this congregation, and all the the web, the intricate web of needs that we all bear. But we know, father, that the the healing for these, the balm for these, the answer to these is Christ applied afresh by the spirit. And so we pray, father, come and do that work now for your name's sake and for the upbuilding of your people. And as pastor Sean is over at Wilmington Reform bringing them a sermon, We pray for your anointing upon him, that he would feed that congregation Christ from scripture, that they would be built up as well. Lord, we look to you now, and we ask for this and more because your heart is generous and ready to give beyond what we could ask.
We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. So I said this text is about the Holy Spirit and I mentioned the spirit just now as I'm praying, but if you look at the text you might say, well where's the Spirit? Because I don't see him mentioned here. I see the anointing, but I don't see the Spirit. Well, in the Old Testament, anointing, which is typically done with oil, anointing is uniquely associated with the spirit of God.
We don't have time to go into all the typology that shows that, but anointing and the spirit of God are linked together in the Old Testament, and this is especially true with the figure of the Messiah. The Messiah, which means, you probably know, anointed one. Messiah is the Hebrew, our version of the Hebrew. Christ is the Greek. They mean the same thing, and they both mean the anointed one.
Both those words derive from the meaning of anointing. So in Hebrew anointing would be masa, which turns into Messiah. In Greek, charisma, which turns into Christ. And so the Messiah, the Christ, he is the anointed one. And he is the one upon whom the spirit uniquely rests.
So anointing and the spirit are together in the figure of the Christ. Let me give you an example of this from Isaiah. I'll just be here briefly so you don't have to turn here with me, but I want you to see it. Isaiah chapter 11 verse two, we read this description of the Messiah. Let me get it for you.
Okay. Isaiah 11 verse two, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of the Lord. A spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. So that text right there says, the spirit will be upon the Messiah in a unique way.
And I hold up my fingers to show you the spirit is mentioned seven times there. The spirit of the Lord, of wisdom, of understanding, of counsel, of might, of knowledge, of the fear of the Lord. And this sevenfold evocation of the Holy Spirit is one of the reasons we see in the book of Revelation the spirit represented as seven lamps, sevenfold spirit, drawing from this passage. And the spirit, the sevenfold spirit is resting on the Messiah here. That's one of the reasons in Revelation the lamb has seven eyes, which are the spirit, which is the spirit.
So Revelation is drawing from this, presenting Christ as the one upon whom the spirit is uniquely resting in fullness, the sevenfold spirit. Now you say, well, hold on, there's no anointing there. Well, in Isaiah 61, which is echoing that text, which I just read, we read this. This might be even more familiar to you. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, says the Messiah.
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me, anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prisons to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. So here, echoing the earlier text that says the Spirit's going to be on the Messiah. Here it says the Spirit is on the Messiah, the anointing, the anointing. So this text links for us spirit and anointing in the figure of the anointed one, the Messiah.
And if that last text I read is familiar to you, it's probably because in Luke Jesus reads that exact text to begin his own ministry. He turns to this page and he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me, finishes it up and then he says, that's fulfilled today. That's me. And in doing so, Jesus not only identifies himself as the anointed one, the Messiah, but he also identifies for us in the New Testament the spirit as the anointing. He links together that idea of the spirit and the anointing.
Now we could go further into this, but for the sake of time, I just want you to see that anointing and spirit are related, and when John speaks here of the anointing that abides in us, he's speaking of the Holy Spirit. The spirit that's been given by Christ to his people, to his church. Now, if that's so though, why doesn't John just say spirit here? Why does he say anointing? Because there's a reason for that.
The biblical authors mean something when they say something. Why does he say anointing here if he's talking about the Holy Spirit? I would suggest to you it's because he's wanting to put front and center for his audience the spirit who's in you is the spirit of Christ. The anointing in you is the spirit of the anointed one. He wants to unite the idea of the anointing, the spirit, and the anointed one, Jesus Christ.
He's saying these two, these two go together. The Spirit is uniquely tethered to Christ. We're going to see that more in a little bit, but the Holy Spirit, this is important to get, is not just generically spiritual. Okay, John is not concerned about being spiritual. There are lots of spiritual people.
There are lots of spiritual experiences. Oh, I had a spiritual experience. There are lots of spiritual teachers and people who say, like, you know, get in touch with the spirit, get in touch with your spiritual side. That's not what is being talked about here. The Holy Spirit is not, in that sense, spiritual.
The Holy Spirit is Christological. He is the anointing and he deals with the anointed one. He's tethered, he's indivisible from the anointed one. So the reason, I believe, John is present, and he's going to talk later about the differences of the spirits. There's the spirit of Antichrist, and there's the spirit of God.
And he calls the spirit of God here the anointing because that spirit is related to the anointed one, to Jesus Christ. We'll come back to that. That's critical for us as we're trying to discern where is the Spirit at work? What is the Holy Spirit? Is this of the Holy Spirit?
Is that of the Holy Spirit? Here we see the spirit is tethered to Christ. That'll become important toward the end of the message today. But look at what John says, just to clarify this way of thinking. In first John four three through four, he says this, Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.
This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world. Let me read the verse before that. By this you know, okay? By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, that's from God.
Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. So he's saying the Holy Spirit, he is linked to Christ. That's why I call him the anointing. He's linked to the anointed one. The one who is crucified, the one who is buried, the one who is raised, the one who is Lord and God in the flesh.
That's the one the spirit is indivisible from. That's the anointed one. He is the anointing. Okay, but there's another thing that we can see here that the anointing or the spirit is indivisible from, namely the proclamation about Christ, the word. The spirit is also indivisible from the word.
Where am I getting that? We could point to many places all throughout scripture where spirit and word work in tandem, but closest to our context here is just up in verse 24. Look what it says in verse 24 of chapter two in first John here. Let what you heard from the beginning, the word, the message, let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. Okay?
Then down in verse 27, what do we see? The anointing you've received from him abides in you. So in verse 24, it's the word about Christ that abides in you. In verse 27, it's the anointing or the spirit that abides in you. At the very least, what's being done here is a tethering of these two things.
A tethering of the word and of the anointing. Or as Jesus says in John four, spirit, Spirit and truth. These things are held together. These things are united together. They're made indivisible in the experience of the believer.
The Spirit works primarily through the word. Through the word. So the spirits, what this connection is showing us here is that the spirits giving of new life and conforming us to Christ and putting sin to death and leading us into truth, all the work the Holy Spirit does, it's not just a bunch of generic spiritual feelings that kind of lead us along in this amorphous world. The spirit works through applying the word about Jesus, through applying the message about Jesus. Think about it like wind and air.
Okay? Wind is not air, but if you don't have air, you don't have any wind. The wind the the air is the medium through which the wind is known and through which the wind works. The wind moves and lives and works in the air. In a similar way, not exactly, but in a similar way, the Spirit is like the wind, the word about Christ is like the air.
The Spirit works through the medium of the word about Christ. He is known through the medium of the word about Christ. If I have no word about Christ, then the clarity of the Spirit's working is at the very least obscured to me. The Spirit works through the word about Christ. These two are held together.
These two are held together in the experience of the believer. So the anointing is indivisible from Christ himself and indivisible from the message about Christ. Okay. Great. Why does this matter?
Why is John why is John bringing this up? Remember, he's bringing it up because false teachers have come into the congregation, and they're saying, who do we listen to? Who do we trust? How do we know who's telling the truth? And into that confusion, John writes about the anointing, and he writes to tell them, you have a teacher.
That's the point. That's why he brings up the anointing. Look at verse 27. But the anointing that you have received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But his anointing teaches you about everything.
So why is he bringing up the anointing? Why are we talking about it today? Because when other voices come against the Christian saying, I'm the truth, John says, wait, wait, wait. You have a teacher. You have a teacher.
It's the anointing. It's the spirit. It's the holy spirit you've been giving given who dwells in you. And if that's the case, then we ought to ask ourselves, how does the spirit teach us? How?
You know, does the spirit teach us by like giving us little spiritual nudges? I think that was the holy spirit. I think I should do this. I don't know, maybe I should do this. Is that how the spirit teaches the church?
Does the Spirit teach it by just like downloading information into our mind and now I've got it, now I know? Does the Spirit teach by speaking to us audibly? I'm not here going to put hard and fast rules around how the spirit teaches. He can do whatever he wants. But traditionally, normally, generally, we have a pattern for how the spirit works, and that's the safe pattern to walk in.
What is that pattern? Well, the best way to see it is by asking ourselves, what's the role of the spirit? What does he even do? What what kind of thing does the spirit do? And you can see that in John 16.
This, you could, if you wanna keep something in first John, it would be worth turning to John 16 because we'll be here for a little bit. John 16, what's the role of the Holy Spirit? Look at verse 16, I mean, verse 12 through 15. Jesus says this, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.
For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the father has is mine. Therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. So what is the role of the spirit here in John sixteen twelve through 15?
What is the role of the spirit? The spirit is fundamentally, what we see here, he is fundamentally Christ centered. This is what we said earlier, we're seeing it here again. The spirit is fundamentally Christ centered. Two ways at least we see that here.
First, what's he called? What's he called in verse 13? The spirit of truth. And what's he do? He will guide you into all the truth.
Well, what's the truth in John's gospel? The truth is Christ himself. Remember John fourteen six, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is the truth. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth, he's the spirit of Jesus Christ.
He's the one who's all about Christ. And if he leads us into the truth, he leads us into Christ. That's what the spirit does. Everything the spirit does, according to this text, is a leading into Christ, a leading to Christ, a leading toward the crucified one who is raised up, who is Lord and God. But then look in verse 14, we get more of this.
He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. The Spirit's work is to glorify Christ. And for John, glorify, you know glorify can be one of these kind of unclear words. For John, glorify means unfold the fullness of, make known the identity of, display the beauty of. The Spirit does that for Christ.
He unfolds Christ. He displays Christ. He makes known Christ. That's what the Spirit does. So if the Holy Spirit is a song, his melody is Christ.
If the Holy Spirit is a waterfall, the shape of that waterfall is Christ. If the Holy Spirit is wine, the taste of that wine is Christ. The spirit glorifies Jesus Christ, and he does that not just by making us feel good about him, but by taking from what is his and making it known to us. It's not just a generic, I feel good when I'm thinking about Jesus. No, it is he takes the riches of Jesus Christ, the actual literal riches, the fullness of Christ, and he makes that known to the church, to his people.
That's how he unfolds Christ. He makes known Christ. If the heart of the father is like a freshwater ocean, infinitely long and wide and deep. The water filling that ocean from end to end is Christ himself, crucified and raised, the fullness of God. And the river flowing out from that ocean into the wilderness of our souls, the river that is the fullness of that ocean pouring out is the spirit, the holy spirit.
That's what the spirit does, takes from the fullness of Christ, who is the fullness of the father, and pours it into the gasping sands of our soul, of our mind, of our life, glorifying Christ as the one who is our all in all. That's the particular work of the Holy Spirit. Everything else the Spirit does is unto that end. Conviction of sin, leading us, illumining scripture. Anything else the Spirit does is unto the end of unfolding Christ to us.
So, this matters, parentheses, this matters because do you want to know if the Spirit is present somewhere? Do you want to know if the spirit is working somewhere? Don't look mainly for spiritual experiences. Don't look mainly for signs and wonders. Don't look mainly for big claims about what God has done or what he's told me or what he's shown me.
Look for Christ. If you wanna know if the spirit is at work somewhere, look for the crucified man who is raised up again as God. Look for him displayed. Look for him proclaimed. Look for him lifted up and treasured by his people.
Where is Christ treasured above all? Where is Christ exalted as Lord and God? Where is Christ desired by his bride? Where is Christ conformed to by his people? That's the sign of the Spirit's working.
That's the sign that the Holy Spirit is working in a place. The Spirit is like floodlights pouring upon the cathedral of Christ. He's not the one we're supposed to look at that blinds us. He's the one we're supposed to look along and see Christ. It's in the working of the spirit that Christ has exalted.
So we could say so much about that. Is the spirit working in my life? Is the spirit telling me to do this? Is the spirit working in that place? Did the Spirit do this?
Is Christ on display? Is Christ central? Is Jesus Christ made sweeter and truer and more full to his people? That's the sign the Spirit's working. The other ones are not false signs, it's just that they aren't definitive signs.
Is Christ exalted? That's the definitive sign of the spirit at work because no other spirit does that. No other spirit glorifies Christ. Other spirits can do miracles. No other spirit glorifies the crucified and risen man as Lord and God.
So and let me put a a side note here. Pastor Sean's been teaching us that the spirit's work is to build up the body of Christ. Absolutely. Because the way the body of Christ is built up is by being pointed to Christ. So there's no difference here.
I'm saying it in a Johannine register, he's teaching it in a Pauline register, but there's the same thing. As Christ is exalted by the Spirit, the body is built up by the spirit. Now, okay, all this in view. All this is in view. The spirit does this through the teaching of the apostles as that teaching is preserved in this book.
That's how the spirit does that teaching. He does it through the teaching of the apostles as it's preserved in this book infallibly in the New Testament, in the Old Testament interpreted through the lens of Christ, and as the church has faithfully expounded that teaching throughout her history. We look back and we do see a general direction of clarity that we're to be following. The spirit teaches through the teaching of the apostles as it's preserved in this book, as it's faithfully witnessed to throughout scripture. So wrapping up our question here.
How does the spirit teach us? How does the spirit teach us? Not primarily through personal revelations that lead us to go against what the church has always taught. Not well, me did I say primarily? Not through personal revelations that teach us to go against what the church has always taught.
Not through unique and individual obsessions where it's like, you just don't get it, man. It's all about this. That's not how the spirit that's not the working of the spirit. Not through cryptic leadings that are discernible only to the extremely spiritual. That's not how the Spirit works.
The Spirit leads the church. The Spirit leads his people, not this incredibly narrow, spiritually perceptive group over here. The Spirit's leading and teaching is not through hidden knowledge only held by a few. The spirit teaches the church, the anointing teaches us by relentlessly setting the apostolically proclaimed, by which I mean Jesus has proclaimed here, and Jesus as faithfully proclaimed in his church, the spirit sets this Jesus before our eyes as the truth. And he says, Walk toward that.
Move toward that. Go toward that. He's the truth. How does the spirit teach us? The same way a compass teaches us to walk to the north.
How's the compass do it? It says, that's the north, and I'm not changing my story. That's the north. That's the north, and if you wanna walk north, don't this is not going north. Look, my my it turned.
This is not going north. That's north. That's how the compass leads us. In a similar way, that's what the Spirit does. This is Christ.
This is your Lord. This is your God. This is the fullness. The spirit points to Christ unrelentingly, unerringly, unceasingly, and when we go this way, he says, wait a second, he's over there. Wait a second, he's over there.
He points to Christ as not as I think he is, Christ as we meet him here, and as he's faithfully proclaimed in the history of his church. That's the teaching, that's the teacher. Now, with all this said, let's look at why Paul or why John brings this up in the first place. He brings up this concept of a teacher. Why?
Because other teachers have come into the congregation and are confusing the people and saying, you need to go here, you need to go here. I'm speaking with the true authority. I'm speaking with the true authority. And John says, look at verse, again it's verse 27. The anointing that you receive from him abides in you and you have no need that anyone should teach you.
So you have a teacher, you don't need this other teaching. You have a teacher, you don't need this other teaching. That's what's being said. Now some could point to this verse here and say, look, it says I don't need a teacher. All I need is the Holy Spirit.
Me and my Bible and the Holy Spirit, we'll get this figured out. Well, that is literally how Mormonism started. By someone going off on their own and saying, it's me and my Bible, I'll just figure this out by myself. That's not I don't need a teacher. They're all wrong.
I'll just you tell me. That might sound pious, but that is not the pattern of the life of God's people. And we know John's not saying, you don't need anyone to teach you at all. How do we know that? Well, this letter is full of teaching.
So he does say you need a teacher. I am your teacher. So he's not saying you don't need any teacher at all. This letter itself is full of teaching. The New Testament is full of teaching.
Paul says, put in place, Timothy, faithful men who can teach, set in order a group of people who will teach and pass along this ministry. So he's not saying, you don't need any teacher at all. What's going on here is John is saying, you don't need someone to come in and teach you something further. You don't need someone to come in and teach you something beyond the crucified and risen Christ who is your all that you've received from the apostles. You don't need to go beyond that teaching.
Look, or I'll read it for you. In second John, which is a very short book, so short it doesn't have any chapters. Second John seven says this, many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. See how critical that is for John. This man who was crucified and raised, he's the Christ.
He's Lord. He's God. Many do not confess that, he says. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.
Look at verse I'll read verse nine. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. So John is saying to his readers and through the scripture here to us, you have the message that was from the beginning, Christian. You have the word about the one who is crucified to take away your sin.
You have the word about the one who is raised up as the refuge of peace for your eternal existence. You have the Holy Spirit within you who points to this one, who unfolds the glory of this one, the excellence of this one. You have that and you don't need something more. You don't need a new teaching to come in and give you beyond this, more than this, the extended edition of this. John is saying you don't need that kind of teaching.
And the same thing, again not one to one, but the similar thing can be seen today. There are many teachers who would go out into Christ's church and insist on something beyond the apostolically proclaimed Christ. They would insist on a particular theological system. Now I think theological systems are very helpful, but if somebody says, You need this. This is the authority.
This is the thing that's necessary, and Christ is pushed to the side, the apostolic Christ is pushed to the side, that becomes this sort of thing where John would say, You don't need that kind of teaching. You don't need somebody foisting that upon you. Somebody might come and say, You need a specific version of the Bible, or, You need to read these lost books or else you're gonna miss it, or, You need this spiritual experience. You haven't had this yet. Oh, you need this or else you're living not even the Christian life if you haven't had this.
Or a particular political affiliation or social stance. People can come with all this teaching that says, You need this. But John says, No, you don't. That's beyond Christ. You don't need a teacher in that way.
You don't need someone to push you into those places. The the the world around us is full of teaching that says, you need this. And John says, you don't need that teaching. If you have Christ proclaimed by the apostles, if you have that faithful through line of his church throughout the ages, if you're holding to him, you don't need beyond, more, deeper than that. So Christian, hear this, hear this, there's no hidden key you're missing.
If you're holding fast to Christ, there's no secret key that you're missing. If there's ever a book or a teaching that says, The key to the Bible. The key to a happy life. The key to whatever. If you open that book up and the key is not Christ crucified and risen, burn the book because there's no key that you're missing.
There's no secret knowledge that you need to be on the inside. There's no secret knowledge you need, Christian. Christ Christ is all and he's been proclaimed to us in scripture, by the apostles, through the church, all of this in the spirit. There's no deeper truth you need to be taught. Now, there's always more to see in Christ.
Don't hear me say, pack up the bag, stop thinking, check out, you're done. There's always more to see in Christ. There's always deeper to go in Christ. There's always fuller to unfold in Christ, but not beyond Christ. You see the difference?
There's more in him. There's nothing more beyond him. And the spirit leads us into him. And if someone is calling us beyond him, John says, don't listen. Don't listen because you have the fullness in Christ.
You have the anointing who teaches you about Christ. So let me wrap up. What's the spirit teach us? If you haven't gotten it, the spirit teaches us Christ. He teaches us Christ.
Jesus Christ. The spirit's joy and glory is to take from the infinite depths of the ocean of the slain and risen Jesus. The God man who pours out his life on the cross for you, for anyone who would come to him. The God man who is buried and raised up and seated on high, coming again, to whom Christian, you are united, the Holy Spirit proclaims him. The Holy Spirit takes from his riches and pours it out in torrents of grace over the church.
The Spirit says, preaches, teaches Christ slain and risen. Our peace, our hope, our life, our light, our way, our truth, the revelation of God, our food and our drink, all things to us as love. That's what the spirit teaches. And then the very last thing. Look, there's a command that John slips in here.
Just as it has taught you, abide in him. That's the last thing. Abide in this Christ. It's not enough just to see him. Abide in him.
In the face of upheaval, Christian, in the face of existential dislocation that makes it feel like everything's falling apart, when the mountains of stability that I've trusted in are thrown into the sea of uncertainty and confusion, and I say, what do I do now? Abide in Christ. That's the answer. Be a branch in the vine. And you say, oh, it's so simple.
Right, because when you're drowning, need simplicity. You need hold on to the rope. Hold on to the rope. That's what you don't need. Tie a sheepshake knot three times around here and put your hand.
You don't need that. Tell me what to do. I'm dying. And John says, here's what it is. Hold fast to Christ.
Abide in him. He will not fail you. He's gone through every horror before you. He's seated in glory beyond you, and he will not fail you. So be a branch in the vine.
Let the fibers of his being penetrate and interweave with you by the spirit. Let his life flow into yours. Let his cleansing blood pump through your veins, run through your veins, sanctifying you to him. Let your every loss and sorrow and pain and shame and sin and regret and hell itself see it embraced by him, born by him in his own crucified flesh, and see it healed in his own risen body, the body of which you are a member, Christian, and in the face of every upheaval as his anointing has taught us, abide in him. Abide in him.
May it be so. Let me pray for us now. Father, thank you for the Holy Spirit. Thank you Lord that some two thousand years ago, you Lord Jesus Christ crucified and raised up again, poured out as oil of mercy and gladness upon your people, the Holy Spirit, to dwell in us, to make us your temples, to unite us as spiritual ligament to your body, to make us your own, to sanctify us, and as we see here, to teach us, to lead us to yourself. So I pray, Father, that your Holy Spirit poured out upon us through Christ would lead us to Christ.
Grant that King's Tree and every faithful congregation would listen to the anointing, would listen to the Holy Spirit, would not be led off into strange tributaries, but would follow the central path of your people holding fast to Christ. And I pray, Lord, that every one of us individually would hold to him. In the face of all the tumults of this life, may this be the one thing we hear and that which you grant us to do. Abide, abide, Abide in Christ and he in us. To our joy, to our life, to your glory, father, through him, now and forever we pray.
In Jesus name. Amen.
Caleb: Thank you for listening to this message from King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God and the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.