 John chapter 14 verses 16 through 18. In John chapter 14, I'll begin reading at verse 16, read to verse 18, and we'll begin our study. In John 14 verse 16 Jesus said this. He said, I will pray the Father and He will give you another helper that He may abide with you forever. The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. Now as we begin let me remind you of what we have seen previous to this. In verse 15 Jesus had just connected obedience to Him with love for Him. Remember He had said in verse 15, if you love me keep my commandments. So He connected obedience to Him with love for Him and He said, if you love me keep. Now that word keep in verse 15 is speaking of a habit of obedience. It's not a one time kind of, I will obey you, but it's a lifetime of obedience that He's speaking about. And so He says, if you love me you're gonna habitually and continually have as a desire in your life to obey me. It's a lifetime of obedience, not occasional obedience. You see a desire to live in obedience to the Word of God is actually one of the earmarks of a Christian. It is what has been referred to as a visible expression of living faith. One of the devotional writers that I like is named as A.W. Tozer. A.W. Tozer said this. Tozer said, faith is a living, flaming thing leading to surrender and obedience to the commandments of Christ. So a growing hunger to please the Lord is one of the ways you can internally know that you love Him. You see those who do not desire to follow His Word, those who don't desire to obey Him, don't know Him. This desire and discipline are evidences of genuine faith in Jesus Christ. In 1 John in chapter 2 verses 3 through 5, John said, by this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. He who says I know Him and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps His Word truly the love of God is perfected in Him. And by this we know that we are in Him. You see, obedience, a desire to obey is an earmark of somebody who has committed their heart to Christ. A person who doesn't have a desire to habitually obey to follow Him according to His Word, well that's a way for them to know that they don't have a relationship with God. That's a way to know you don't know Him. If you don't have a hunger in your heart to do those things that please Him, John would say you don't know Him because to know Him is to love Him. And to love Him is to obey Him. And so the bottom line is one of the evidences that I really know Christ is to have a genuine faith that is rooted in obedience. And so love for the Lord motivates us to obey Him. Our obedience isn't built on a desire to obtain something from Him alone. It's built on a love for Him that results in our desiring to do what He commands. My wife and I, being married and all, there are things that we, as a married couple, that we do for one another. And it's not because I'm afraid she's not going to love me. It's because I love her. If I know there are things that please her, those are the things I want to do. If she asks me to do something, I do it not because I'm afraid of her, though she is a very fear, she makes me scared all the time, but it's not because I'm afraid of her, it's because I love her. It's because it pleases her. It's because I want her happy. It's because I want her to know how deeply I love her. And so your response in obedience isn't some kind of legalistic thing like, I'd better do this because if I don't do this, then I don't have a relationship with God. It's, no, I want to do this because I have a relationship with God. And John says this is how you can know. Do you have a constant burning desire to please Him? Do you have a hunger within your heart to do those things that are pleasing because we have a love for God? And now that's what motivated us to go online. And by the way, that's why we, we're willing to suspend live church services. It isn't an obedience to the government because we're afraid that they were going to come in and close down our church. I didn't make the decision to go online because of that. I respect the government. I yield to the government as, insofar as it does not contradict what Scripture plainly says, we ought to obey God rather than man, the apostles taught us. And that's absolutely true. But the reason we went online isn't simply to obey the government. I'm not compromising my integrity and I'm not compromising my faith by going online. You know, frankly, this lockdown on churches has clearly revealed the world's view of the church clearly is revealed. The world really thinks of us because church gatherings and the teaching of the word of God is not regarded as essential. We're not on the list of things that are essential, which is interesting because when you look at lists, and I did this, I went to Almighty Google and said, what are essentials right now? What are regarded as essentials? And there was a list and I won't go through all of them, but listen to some of the things that are regarded by our government as essential, liquor stores, hardware stores, farmers markets, marijuana dispensaries, florists, abortion providers, cost goes and the like, gun stores, Starbucks, drive-ins, drive-ins are essential. Just this last Easter on the weekend of Good Friday into Easter, one of the local drive-ins that we have, we still have drive-ins around, one of the local drive-ins was still doing business, they were still having people pull up and all, but if you wanted to drive in church in some places, you would have gotten citations and fines. So a drive-in was okay. An abortion provider is okay. A liquor store is still okay. You stand in line to get into a Costco and you're right next to a person in front of you and that's okay, but gathering in your cars in a parking lot for a church service, you can get fined, you can get cited. And then the world has never regarded the church, but if there's nothing more plain than that for us to see, then perhaps we're not looking. You see it's revealing that church services, even when they conform to the guidelines, are still regarded as non-essential. So it would seem obvious that the devil wants to silence the voice of the church. He wants us to not be able to say Jesus is alive. He wanted us not to be able to praise God together as an assembly of faithful people saying, God is alive. Our only hope is Jesus Christ. He wanted to silence the voice of the church, but he can't. In 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 9, Paul said that the word of God is not changed. Right now, we are reaching more people than we ever have through online church services. People who don't normally attend church services are now watching us online. Remember in Matthew 16, 18, Jesus said, the gates of Haiti shall not prevail against his church. And we're not compromising by following our government standards. We're remaining faithful to the Lord, and we're seeking ways to get the message out. If he tries to close this door, we're going to look for another door. That gospel is going to get out. The message is going to continue to proceed, and that's what the message is intended to do. If you don't compromise, we are simply finding ways, and the Holy Spirit is inspiring us, and we'll see this in a moment. But we're going to remain faithful to the Lord. We'll seek ways to get his message out. In 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 2, Paul said it like this, he said, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering in teaching, be ready in season and out of season. We are in one of those moments, guys, that is out of season. But where do we to be? Ready. So if you try to close the door, enemy, we'll find a way to get in. And that's what we've done. And we're having more people watching our church services in over 30 countries watching our church services. Because what we did is we didn't compromise, we adapted. And as we adapted, the word kept and is keeping going forward. The word cannot be stopped. When Paul was incarcerated in Rome, it could have seemed that the gospel progress halted. He had been jailed for some time, and it could appear that the ministry that God had given to him had ended. But that wasn't true. Paul was placed under house arrest, but he's still ministered. All you need to do is look at the book of Acts in chapter 28, verse 16. And that verse tells us that Paul was permitted to dwell by himself with the soldier who guarded him, with the soldier who guarded him, though he was imprisoned, God's word was not. And the things that he went through ultimately turned out for good for the sake of the gospel. Because he wrote in Philippians chapter 1, verses 12 and 13, I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard and all the rest that my chains are in Christ. So that soldier who was there guarding him got the gospel. And then the one who took the next turn got the gospel. And he was able to take this message to the whole palace guard, something that wouldn't have been possible had he not been incarcerated. Word of God has not changed. The Word of God has a way of getting out. You see, Satan has made a great error in thinking he can stop the gospel. He has made a mistake in thinking he can stop the progress of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so because we love him, we keep his commandments. And part of his command is to continue proclaiming the message of the gospel. And here's something else I want to point as I'm about to move into verse 16, but I want to point one more thing out. Notice again, verse 15, if you love me, keep my commandments. You do love him. And we do want to keep his word. We want to keep his commandments. Now even that night, Jesus had given many commandments. Sometimes we who are filled with the love of the grace of God, we may forget that God still gives commandments and the New Testament is filled with commandments. And if you're reading your Bible, you're going to see this because just that night, Jesus had given several commands in John 13, for example, verse 34, he had said this, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you that you love one another. That's a command. A new command I give to you. He had already given a commandment to love one another. In chapter 14, when we began chapter 14, verse one, he began by saying, let not your heart be troubled. That's a command. Let not your heart be troubled. Let not speaks of volition. I have the ability to allow my heart to be troubled. But he commanded me not to. Why? Because I cast my cares on him because he cares for me. And so he's commanded me not to live in fear. Let not my heart be filled with anxiety. And then he said in chapter 14, verse one, the second portion, he said, you believe in God. Here's your command. Believe also in me. Let not your heart be troubled command. You believe in God. Believe also in me. Another command. And so he gave many commands in chapter 14. He went on in verse 11 to say this, believe me that I am in the father and the father and me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves. What's that? A command to believe, to believe in him, his words and to believe in his works. He's been giving a series of commands. And that's why he can say, if you love me, keep my commandments. And I've told you to love one another. I've told you to believe in me. I've told you these things because these are things that'll help you and strengthen you and will make you what you're supposed to be. You see, in the atmosphere of faith, love and obedience, Jesus now begins to share with them concerning the Holy Spirit. One of the problems that the church has today that I'll address for a moment is that we're trying to do God's work in the power of our own flesh. Of all people, we should know better. And yet here we are trying to do God's work with our own ingenuity and our own plans. You know, when this coronavirus thing hit, the first thing I was doing is I was, I was in my heart, I was broken before God. I was broken before God. When the announcement came on the news that there was going to be no longer assembling allowed, my son, Joseph, whose home is being worked on right now, he and his wife and my precious little granddaughter are living with us. And Joseph was sitting across from me and I looked at him and I said, this is just not good news, son. This is not good news. And he looked at me, you know, and my son's in the medical field. He's a, he's a registered nurse and he went to Biola, one of the finest nursing programs in the nation. And he also instructs for Biola. He goes out, he's an instructor. This, this, this man knows his job. And he's now a hospital administrator overseeing two hospitals. My son is very well schooled and very greatly experienced in nursing. So naturally I can ask him questions because he knows he has the meetings, he and all that. And he's sitting there across from me and, and I looked at him and I said, this is not good news, son. And he goes, no, I said, no son. I said, my church, our fellowship is built on the principle of assembling together. We are a Jesus people community. I said the emphasis of my ministry comes all the way back. It's not just the scripture. Of course, it's the scripture, but it's my tradition. I came from the Jesus people movement. I'm a Jesus freak and we value fellowship. We value it. That's our heartbeat is to be together. I said, and you go in our foyer and it says that Jesus people community, everything here is built on the word of God, Jesus, the chief cornerstone and the application of the word worship, witness and witness. And so that pillar that has made this church, the loving fellowship that it is, the enemy just took a saw to it guys to try and tear it down because we're not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together as a manner of some is because when you read your Bible for Max and the church has been birth, the first thing they did is they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and breaking a bread and prayer and all of those things that made the church what the church is. And that's what we're built on. Some people don't value fellowship as much as I do. I value it. I'm a person person. And the idea that I could not be with my fellowship with my church to see my people. And I was sitting there looking at my son and I cried. I began to cry. I said, you don't understand what this is going to do because I don't want the sheep to be scattered. You smite the shepherd and the sheep are scattered. Not everybody cares about those things because some churches are built in other things. But our church is built on Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone and fellowship with one another and his word in the spirit, worship. And I teared up and I said, this is hitting me really hard, son. It's hitting me very hard. But you know what the Lord has done in the midst of all of this? He has strengthened the hearts of the brethren. Our church has become stronger. I still long to get together with our people. I'm looking forward to the celebration we're going to have when we're able to do it once again. But I forgot for a moment. And so the next day I was driving and some of you know this story. I'll say it briefly. I was years ago when our church was very young. I was, as a pastor, we were looking for a place to meet and doors were being closed and it looked like we were not going to have a place to meet as a church. And I was driving home and I was crying to the Lord crying out to him and physically crying. I said, Father, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I'm going to do. And I cried to him about it. And the voice of the Lord, I believe it was his voice spoke to my heart and he said, I did not raise you up to let you fall. That's Philippians chapter one verse six, by the way, he continues to the work that he began. But his voice spoke and said that. And those are words I'll always remember. I did not raise you up to let you fall. And I came home and everything turned out well. And we got property we were looking to get and church continued to move in the way that that honored God. And the next day after I had shared with Joseph and I was on my way to work here, the spirit of the Lord reminded me of what he had said earlier. And that's why I'm not worried about it anymore. I'm not concerned about not because I don't care. I do care, but because I know that this church has been built on Jesus Christ. And I know it's built on his word. And I know it's built on the love of God. And I have the greatest loving people that I've ever known in our fellowship, those who serve and those who volunteer and those who support and those who are around and those who send me emails and say, I love you. We're praying for you pastor. That's this church. That's this church. You're not a group that has a quote unquote celebrity pastor. We're a group of people who have Jesus Christ as our great shepherd. And he has brought us together and he's kept us together. And this, by the way, is what the Holy Spirit intends to do. And that's what Jesus is speaking about here. He's talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. Now up to this point, John hasn't given a great deal of information concerning the work of the spirit. He has spoken of the spirit. And let me review a few things with you for a moment, but he hasn't given much detail concerning him all the way back in chapter one, verse 32. Remember how John the Baptist, John bore witness saying, I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove and remain, remaining on him. So there's a mention of the Holy Spirit. And we saw John mentioned the spirit in chapter three, verses five and six, when Nicodemus came and spoke to Jesus and Jesus answered and said, most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit. And he spoke of regeneration. People are not Christians because they're watching a Bible study right now. People are Christians because the Holy Spirit has given them new life. And so he said, that which is born of the spirit. Then we saw in chapter four, verse 24, when Jesus was speaking to a Samaritan woman and he said, God is spirit. Those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. In John 6.63, Jesus said, it is a spirit who gives life. He is the life-giving spirit. And then in John 7.38 and 39 at the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus said, he who believes in me, as the scripture has laid, has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And then John went on to say, this he spoke concerning the spirit whom those believing in him would receive for the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. So Jesus now is giving more detail concerning the person of the Holy Spirit. Notice in verse 16, how he said, I will pray the Father and he will give you another helper that he may abide with you forever. Another helper, a la paracletas. When he says another helper, that's the Greek, one of the same kind who comes alongside the paracletas is a lawyer, a defender. So he's saying, I'm about to leave you, but you will not be without help. You will have an advocate. You'll have a helper. And this helper will make sure that you're not orphaned, that you are not without natural support. This helper will not be another human being. This helper will be like him. Now remember Jesus was their defender, their champion, their helper while he was with them on earth. It was Jesus who kept them safe from those who would harm or oppose them. All you need to do is look at the various times and people confronted the apostles and you'd see Jesus on the scene defending and protecting them. Well, he's about to leave them, but he will not leave them unprotected. He begins to teach them about the Holy Spirit and he begins to reveal person of the Spirit as well as the work of the Spirit and he begins, and notice as he does this, he begins by acting as the mediator because he says in verse 16, I will pray the Father. So Jesus is acting as the mediator. He says, I will pray. And he speaks concerning the Spirit what the Spirit will do in verse 16. He abides with you forever. In verse 17, he is the Spirit of truth. In verse 17, the world cannot receive him because it neither sees him nor knows him. And again in verse 17, believers will know him for he dwells with you and he will be in you. Now notice how he says the Spirit abides with you forever. Jesus remained with the disciples for a limited time. His ministry on on earth with his disciples was limited in time three years, some say as much as three and a half years, but three years. But Jesus' time on earth with his disciples was limited because he went to the Father. But he's saying the Holy Spirit will remain with you throughout the rest of your life. Somebody said not that he should remain with you a few years, as I have done, and then leave you, but be with you in all places to the close of your life. He shall be your constant guide and attendant. He will not, he will not leave you. He will remain with you. Remember in the Old Testament how the Holy Spirit would descend, work in somebody, but also be removed? Remember how that in Judges, the Old Testament book of Judges, chapter 16, verse 20, how that Samson did not know that the Lord had departed from him? Or how in 1 Samuel chapter 16, verse 14, which tells us that the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul? Remember the prayer of David in Psalm 51, verse 11, do not cast me away from your presence. Do not take your Holy Spirit from me. That's how the Holy Spirit would work in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit is present, but he didn't remain forever. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit would come upon, anoint for, but leave, and that's why David would say, take not thy Holy Spirit from me. That's why Samson didn't even realize the Spirit had departed, and that's why God removed the Spirit from Saul, because the Holy Spirit came to anoint, to work, but then to leave, but not in the New Testament. Jesus is saying the Spirit will abide with a believer forever. In Ephesians 4, verse 30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. In other words, he's going to continue, he's going to teach you, he will comfort you, he will lead you and advise you, he will defend you, he will intercede for you, and he will do so for all of my followers till the end of time. The Holy Spirit does that. Do you walk in the Spirit, guys? Here's a question for us. Do you walk in the Spirit? Do you wake up in the morning and say, God, fill me today? Work in me today? God, work in me today? God, awaken me? Awaken me to your power? Awaken me to your presence? Do you know when the easiest place is the backslide is on a church staff? The things that you were doing that got you on the staff sometimes go to the wayside and your job takes over. You need to wake up in the morning and you need to say, God, fill me today. May the fruit of your Spirit be in me. I'm speaking from experience. Like I told you, you know, I hear the word that we're not going to be able to assemble and the first thing I do is I quench the Holy Spirit. First thing. First thing, I'm tearing up saying, God, what are we going to do? And I'm telling my son, Joseph, you don't understand. You don't understand what I'm going through. And the next day the Lord has to remind me, I said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. I raise this church up to bring glory to Jesus Christ. I'm not going to stop my work. I had to remind myself, guys, do you have to do the same? You can get caught up in your jobs. You can get caught up in your life and you can quench the Holy Spirit. And before you know it, everything you're doing is flesh to try and try to keep people coming. When you need to do what I've done and what I do and I'm saying this as a sinner confessing it to you. I cry and say, God, help me. I can't do it without you. I can't. A church is not a business. It's not just an organization. Church is an organism. It's a living reality, an entity of life. And it's known by something. It's known by the power of the Spirit and the presence of the Spirit who produces the fruit of the Spirit. And Jesus said, I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. I will be with you to the end. The Holy Spirit is with us. We need to remember that. Maybe somebody right now who's listening to the study needs to remember that he's with you. He hasn't left you. He's also referred to as the Spirit of Truth. Remember how that Jesus spoke of himself as being the way, the truth and the life. Well, it's the Holy Spirit and we'll see this as we go through John 14 following for a while. It's the Holy Spirit who reveals and communicates truth. He reveals to us first and foremost who Jesus is. He's the Holy Spirit who convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment according to John 16.8. And he awakens us to our need for salvation and our need for the Lord Jesus Christ. And he testifies of Jesus. He guides us to truth. He glorifies and reveals the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 12.3, Paul said, therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus a cursed and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Salvation originates with him through his conviction and it is he who convinces us that Jesus Christ is who Jesus says he is. You see, if I'm able to convince somebody of Jesus who he is to argument, then somebody else through their argumentation can convince them that Jesus isn't what I just convinced them that he is. But when the Holy Spirit convicts, nobody can convince you otherwise. When the Holy Spirit convicts you that Jesus Christ is Lord, you can have someone knock on your door and say, I represent this faith or that faith, this belief system or that belief system. And you'll smile at them and you'll give them Christ because it's Jesus Christ that they need, not that religious system, right? That's what you do. Nobody can convince me that Jesus Christ is not Lord. Nobody could. Nobody can take that away because it's a Holy Spirit who convinced me. No one calls Jesus Lord but by the Spirit. Keep that in mind because sometimes people may come forward in quote unquote an invitation when in fact there are a thousand and one different reasons they came forward. But if they truly repented, truly confessed their sin, truly asked God, be merciful to me as sinner and truly said, God, come into my life and forgive me. Make me your temple and the Holy Spirit takes residence. From that day on, there are new creation, old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. That's what took place in my life and in our lives. And that's possible for you right now to take place for those of you who are watching. You see, non-Christians are not familiar with the work of the Spirit. They can't discern Him. Their lives are familiar only with that which is material. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2.14, the natural man doesn't receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to Him and neither can he know them because they're spiritually discerned. A natural man is another way of speaking of a man who's not a Christian, a person who's not saved. A natural man, and he says, does not receive, the word received means to welcome or accept. A natural man, an unspiritual man does not welcome or accept the things of the Spirit of God. Why? Because they are foolishness. The word foolishness means moronic or imbecilic. It means it doesn't make any sense. The natural man received it, not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to Him. So go and speak to somebody about Jesus Christ and tell them that Jesus Christ died on a cross, was buried, but three days later rose from the dead and see what they say. Go tell that to Bill Maher. Go tell that to Poopy Goldberg and all the rest of the intellectuals that we see flooding the TV screens with their bile. The bottom line is it takes the Holy Spirit to convince the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and they don't discern these things because they don't receive them. These are those who reject the Lord. They reject that Jesus is the only way to God. And they're content believing that everybody automatically goes to heaven, but if that were the case, guys, if everybody automatically goes to heaven, there is no reason to ever preach the gospel. There's no reason to. Why would I preach the gospel? Everybody gets to go. And only Hitler goes to hell. And only people like Stalin or Lenin or Mao or named the dictator. Only the really, really bad people go to hell. That's not what the Bible says. The Bible says there's none good, no, not one. There's not a single person that is good. And the only person who was ever good got crucified, Jesus Christ. And so we all need salvation. It's not that I can bring somebody up and compare my goodness to theirs and say, see, I'm a better person than this, because we can always find someone that we think we're better than. It's when I'm placed next to Jesus, you may be better than this person here, but are you better than this person here? Jesus and all of us would say no, not a single one of us is right. We all know that, but it takes the Holy Spirit to do that work. And then notice again in verse 17, he said that believers are going to know him, they're going to perceive and understand they're going to have a knowledge of him, how he dwells with you and will be in you. Now, up to this point, you've received a measure of truth, you believe in and know of the person of the Spirit, but the work that Jesus is speaking about is a future work. It's a work that is accomplished on the day of Pentecost. And on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came and descended upon 120 in an upper room, baptized him in the power of the Spirit and the church was birthed. And from that day forth, those who come to faith in Christ become temples of the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 3.16, do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? So it's not that he dwells in temples made with human hands, but God dwells in human beings. And when I received Christ as my Savior, I became his temple, he dwells in me and I'm brand new in him. 1 John 4.15 says, whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. In Romans 8.9, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. So that means if I'm relying on my religion and not a relationship with God, if that means that I'm going to trust in the different things I've gone through in my religious background as my means of entering into heaven, I've made a great mistake. For me in my history, I received baptism as a little as an infant. I went through communion. I went through confirmation, received various sacraments because my religious background was Catholic, but I didn't know Jesus Christ. I had never opened my heart to him. I was relying more on believing what my mom had taught me and the church had taught me, but it was all intellectual because my life wasn't transformed. But when the Holy Spirit convicted me of my sin and I said, God forgive me a sinner. I was washed by the blood of Christ and became new in him. And like the Bible says, now I became the temple of the Spirit of God. And so are you. God's Spirit dwells in you. Don't forget that. That is the biggest mistake believers make, guys. It really is. We quench the Spirit. We don't wake up in the morning with that prayer. We don't go through the day saying, God help me. I can honestly say that's my life. I say to the Spirit, I say God in Jesus' name today, help me. Help me to have your heart. Help me to hear your voice. Help me to love your word. Help me to be a good husband to my wife. A good father to my children. A good grandfather to my grandbabies. A good pastor to my sheep. A good person in my community. It takes the Holy Spirit because other people may think I am a certain thing, but I know what I really am. And without God's Holy Spirit, every evil that a human being can do, I'm capable of doing. But with the Holy Spirit, he can restrain me and work in me and produce in me the fruit of the Spirit. We who serve him in the way that we do, we ought to be the ones who are the best examples of what the Holy Spirit does in a person's life. We ought to be the examples that people use when they say, what is it like to follow Christ? Well, I know somebody, I want to be like that. I want to be like that. Now Jesus said, and I'll close, I won't leave you orphans. I will come to you. I will not leave you orphans. Word orphan. It speaks not only of those who are without a father. Of course, the word orphan speaks of the fatherless. But it also had another meaning during the day of Christ. It was also a way that people would be spoken of who did not have a rabbi, who did not have a teacher. It wasn't exclusive for, in other words, being a fatherless individual. But it could be used as a way of speaking of someone who doesn't have a spiritual leader. I will not leave you orphans. It's not simply saying, I'm not going to leave you without a daddy. It's deeper in a spiritual way than that. It's, I will not leave you without a teacher. The Holy Spirit is our teacher. You'll see this as we keep going through the chapters in front of us. I'm not going to leave you without support. I'm not going to leave you without a leader. He said, I will come to you. Now he had spoken about going away. And again, he makes it very clear he's going to come back. And his coming to them is going to contain at least three aspects, if you will. He once again will see them when he's resurrected from the dead. That's a short period of time. He will be with them at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descends on them. And in this fashion, they will have his presence. By the way, that's how you and I, that's how we can also have our rabbi, our leader, our teacher, is by having the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. You see, he's going to finally, once again, be with them when he returns. For us, we will be with him at the rapture. He will also be with people, if you will, at what is called the second coming. And the blessing we have is that he's, he's with us and never leaves us. Like it says in Isaiah 41, 10, fear not. I'm with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. And I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. You're not alone. You're not alone. You're never alone. Ever, ever, I will never. Even when you're in your room all by yourself and you think that it's just you in the darkness, you're never alone. You're never alone. He's always with you. He will never leave you. He will never forsake you. And one of these, these days and it won't be that long, you will see him face to face. What's that day going to be like, guys? What is that day going to be like when you finally get to see him? I'm looking forward to that. That motivates my life. That motivates my life. I was speaking to my grandson, Josiah, and I'll close with this. And I was teasing him last week. And I said, Well, you know, I'm an old man. You know, I won't be here for that much longer. We were talking. I said, I'm just, this is real, you know, and he looks at me like kind of bothered him that I said that because we're talking. I said, you know, getting older. And this is what he said. He said, Well, Papa, I hope that it's at least 20 years. Now, in his mind, 20 years is a long time. In my mind, I'm thinking, you want me dead that soon? You know, now the point I'm making is very simple, guys. One of these days, and it won't be long, whether it's 20 years, 30 years, five years or one, we get to see him face to face. I will never leave you. I will be with you forever. Think about that. When you're all alone, and you're concerned, you're never alone. You're never alone. You are never alone. It's always with you. It's closer to you than you can imagine. He's within you. He's guiding you. He's empowering you. He's comforting you. He's taking care of you because he loves you. And if you don't know the Lord, then you can't say that. Because right now you're his enemy. You're not his friend. But if you want to come to the Lord and you want to be right with God, you need to say, God, be merciful to me. I'm a sinner. Forgive me of my sins. Cleanse me. Wash me with the blood of Christ and come into my life. I want to be the temple of the Spirit of God. I want to know you. And if you have a heart for that, you can do that. Let's close our eyes for a minute and pray. Let me share with you. If you want to give your heart to Jesus, you've been watching, and you may not be a believer, maybe just interested in what we talk about while this is your moment. I would say to you, God loves you. He sent us on Christ to die on a cross for you. Jesus was buried when he died. He resurrected from the dead three days later. He ascended into heaven. The Bible tells us, and he sends the Spirit to dwell in us. If you want a relationship with God right now, God, I want you then just pray. Sincerely pray with faith. Father, I know that I'm a sinner. Jesus died on a cross to save sinners. Jesus died to save me. Forgive me of my sins. Cleanse me. Come into my life. I will follow you every day from this day forward. In Jesus' name, amen. God bless you.