All right, church, how are we doing this morning? Got a little cloudy out, but it's the nine thirty. So you guys awake and with me ready to go? All right. Love it. If you have a Bible, you can flip to First John four eleven through sixteen. That's where we're going to be. Uh, as you flip there in your Bibles, I want to tell you about a book by a pastor named Francis Chan that came out about fifteen years ago, and it had a really kind of arresting or provocative title. The title of that book was called Forgotten God, and it was about this unfortunate trend in a lot of modern churches and modern Christianity. The trend that there is a huge gap in our understanding of the Holy Spirit. Think about it. As Christians, we receive a lot of teaching about God the Father, the sovereign creator of the world who gave the son. Uh. As Christians, we've received a lot of teaching about Jesus, who's the Son of God, who gave his life for us and rose again. But the Holy Spirit, uh, for many of us, there's a huge gap in our understanding. He's become the forgotten God. In fact, last year, a ministry called Ligonier did a state of theology survey where it polled Christians nationwide, asking them various questions. And on that survey, fifty three percent of Christians agreed with this statement. The Holy Spirit is a force, but not a personal being. So that is over half of people who who claim the name of Christ, who say they are Christians, who, who, who are so misunderstood they don't realize the Holy Spirit is God Himself, the third person of the Trinity. He has become for many of us the forgotten God. And that's a problem that still persists. But here's another problem that I can see when I look at the church as a whole. And maybe, maybe you can relate. For some of us, the Holy Spirit might not be the forgotten God, but he might be the confusing God, right? When it comes to the spirit, even as I say that you don't even know what to think or confusion abounds like, okay, what should it look like when Christians are filled with the spirit, like Paul instructs us to be in Ephesians five? What should a church look like when it's filled with spirit filled people? Because here's the challenge. How one church answers that question might be very different from another, and how some people might define clear evidences or marks of the spirit might be very different from others or what you've even personally experienced. So here is the question. In the midst of that kind of unknowing and that kind of confusion, can God's Word cut through with clarity? And can God tell us who he is and why that matters? What does God's Word say about who the Holy Spirit is and what he does? What is God's Word? Say? Are the clear marks or evidences of. When the Holy Spirit rests upon a church or a person? And shouldn't we want to know what the spirit does, not just according to opinions or what we've heard and seen around us, but according to the very revelation of God and His Word. Here's the question for the many of us who see the Holy Spirit as the forgotten or confusing God, what does the Holy Spirit do in the life of every believer? and in the life of every church. Most fundamentally, what does the Holy Spirit do in every believer and in every church? What does God's Word say is the evidence of when the spirit rests upon a church or a person? What part does the spirit play in the Christian life? And as we look at our passage today, what you're going to see is that the Holy Spirit is actually vital to John's theology and the center of this passage. We're about to unpack. And as we explore the role of the Holy Spirit. My hope is this, that for this church, the Holy Spirit would not be the forgotten and confusing God, but the known and beloved God by you and me and by Veritas Church. So with that being said, let's dig in. Let's start by hearing the whole passage this morning. All right. This is God's Word from First John four eleven through sixteen. We're going to read the whole thing, then go from there. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and He in us, because he has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. So as you read these verses along with me, hopefully you already started picking up on the repetition in this passage, because repetition, it often points us to what's important to the author. And hopefully you're starting to notice, okay, not once, not twice, not three times, four times. John mentions the idea of abiding in one way or another. Some version of this phrase pops up four times. We abide in God, and God abides in us. Okay, abide can be a churchy word. It's when we even sing in songs. But but here's what John is describing. It's actually a precious reality that every believer has, whether they know it or not. And what every genuine Christian experiences. When God saves us, he doesn't just forgive us, though he does. He also makes his home with us. He unites us to himself. Imagine most popular image. For this is a branch connected to a tree. What happens when a branch is grafted into a tree? All the tree's nourishment, all its health, all its power, all its energy goes from the trunk to the branch. And in the same way John is saying, when we become Christians, we are connected to life changing, life shaping union with God. He shares his very life with us. And what that does is it starts to change us from the inside out. And for John in this letter, this truth, it changes everything. This reality of Christians abiding in God and God, abiding in Christians dwelling in us. It's all over John's letter, it's mentioned over twenty times, and it's mentioned four times in our passage today alone. And in some ways, this is kind of John's answer for everything. Why can Christians believe in Christ? Because God abides in us and we abide in God. Why can Christians love like Christ? Because God abides in us. We abide in God. Why can Christians notice and reject false teaching? Because God abides in us and we abide in God over and over again. John is asking us to see genuine Christians are connected to God and that new life produces real effects. Okay, but here's what I really want you to see. Even though this idea of abiding, it's mentioned four times here, it's actually the Holy Spirit who commentators call the predominant idea of this passage. And this section. They're saying, actually, the Holy Spirit is the center of this. Why is that? It's because, according to John, this life changing relationship where God makes his home inside of us, where he transforms us from the inside out, that is a result or an effect of this truth that God the Father has placed within us God the Spirit. Look again at verse thirteen where John says this explicitly. He says, by this we know that we abide in him, and he in us. How he has given us of his spirit. So how can we know God Himself has come to live within us? How does he accomplish this incredible work? He gives us every believer his very spirit. God himself truly actually lives in each one of us. And here's where we need to take a step back and realize this was a promise God made to his people long before the New Testament. Look at what God promised to his people who were headed into exile because of their sin. In Ezekiel, God says, I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you. Ye shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols. I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. God's saying, hey, the power to walk with me, to follow me, to obey me, to know me. That cannot come from just you. You actually need the power of my very Spirit of God Himself. So when I bring you out of this land, I'm going to put my spirit in you so you can actually walk with me. And when Jesus comes on the scene hundreds of years later, this is exactly what he tells John who's writing this letter and the other apostles. This is going to happen. Look at John fourteen sixteen through seventeen with me. Jesus says, I will ask the father. This is him talking after his resurrection and ascension. He's saying, after I do that from heaven, I will ask the father, and he will give you another helper. That's the spirit to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. So what God is saying is on in your heart, I'm going to place the very Spirit of God, and he's going to transform you from the inside out. Now that language of God being in us and dwelling in us, it can feel kind of abstract. But but here's kind of what I want you to picture when I think about this. Think about how a country or community or land or kingdom can dramatically change when a new king or leader or ruler takes up residency on that land's throne. Maybe the former leader was cruel and wicked and selfish and tyrannical. And because he was the king of the land, because he ruled, the land suffered, people were unjustly treated, food was scarce, fear was rampant. But then imagine in this redemptive rescue, a good, noble, righteous king comes from a faraway land and deposes this cruel ruler and sits on the throne. What happens when his presence comes to the land? Everything's flipped upside down now. Justice is what reigns now. Provision goes out. Peace and rest spread. This ruling presence of evil has been deposed, and a ruling presence of a better king reigns. A change of residence on the throne has occurred and the land is different. And whether you realize it or not, this is actually the Christian story. And this is the great work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Our sinful nature is what occupied the throne of our hearts first and ruled it. And it was the ruling power. And we felt those effects were born, enslaved to sin, separated from God, self destructive by nature, hard hearted to God by nature. We can't even love him or pursue him, or say no to sin or experience a life walking with God that we were designed for. But what does God do when he saves us? He kicks that sinful ruler and nature from the throne, and he puts his very spirit there and suddenly it's the righteous, all powerful God who is ruling on the throne of your life inside you. We can experience, John is saying, the very life, the very power of God. And you will change. Why? Because God actually lives inside you. There has been a change of residency. What is most true about you is on the throne of your heart sits God himself, and he's going to change you. I love how one Puritan describes this. He says, the Holy Ghost has full rule of the heart, like a man who's Lord of his house has the liberty to govern it after his own will. Look where the Holy Spirit dwells. There he will be Lord, governing the heart, the mind, the will and desires. Every part of us as Christians now is slowly more and more being ruled, governed by the Spirit Himself. Why can we abide in God because God Himself abides in us. John is saying, you have a new ruler on the throne of your heart, and that changes and transforms everything about you. I'm convinced we don't recognize this reality enough, but if you look back through church history, you would see this was foundational for how believers understood the Christian life and how they could live it. I'm just going to give you one. Here is how nineteenth century Scottish Minister George Smeaton put it. The Holy Spirit is given to inhabit his people, not by a mere inactive presence, but by an effective inhabitation, a powerful dwelling which animates or gives life to and pervades or fills all the faculties and powers of the human mind. He's saying the Holy Spirit is not an inactive presence in believers. He powerfully dwells in them and changes everything about how they think and love and live. Where the spirit dwells, there he will be Lord. And he is not an inactive presence. He is an effective dweller through the spirit. We experience the very life and power of God, the very transforming power that Christ is, and it's because of the spirit. We can say with confidence, God abides in us and we abide in God. But what actually starts happening when the Holy Spirit abides in us? Once the Holy Spirit takes the throne, once he sits down on our hearts, after we are saved and he comes, what does he do in us? That's what we're going to spend the rest of this morning exploring in our text and as we do. One of the things I hope you're going to start to notice. Is that what John points to as the foundational, the most foundational, essential universal marks of the spirit in us as believers is very different from how some people and churches can portray the work of the spirit, or even what might come into your mind when you think about being spirit filled and what that looks like. But we have to let Scripture guide us. And John, clearly in this passage, gives us two marks of the Holy Spirit in all believers that he is writing to, that he thinks are essential for them to know. So that's what we're going to see. Two marks of the spirit once he dwells in us. And we're going to start with what John says right after verse thirteen. To see this first mark of the spirit in all believers, look at verses fourteen through fifteen with me. So right after saying, God has given us His spirit, this is what John says, and we have seen and testify that the father has sent his son to be the Saviour of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. What marks people who God abides in? According to John Watts, clear evidence that the Holy Spirit is indwelling you. It's believing the truth about Jesus. What is evidence that you have God the Spirit? It's that you see and know and believe God the Son. In John's words, it's testifying. Jesus is this world's Saviour and Jesus is the very eternal Son of God. This is the first mark of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers. Transformative belief in Jesus. This is the first mark, a transformative belief in Jesus. And now I want to point out there. Why include the word transformative? Why not just say the Holy Spirit creates belief in Jesus? And here's why. Because language matters. And to just say the Holy Spirit creates belief in Jesus. It might give the impression that Christians indwelt by the spirit can have just a bare factual belief in him. The kind of belief that intellectually in your head says, yeah, I accept Jesus is the Son of God. He's the Savior of the world, uh, without it actually ever affecting our heart in life. But that's the kind of bare intellectual belief James mentions in James two nineteen when he says this. You believe God is one. You do well, even the demons believe and shudder. Is this all the Holy Spirit does? Give us the same bare belief in Jesus that the demons do. The demons knew that Jesus was the Son of God. They knew he was coming to redeem people from sin. Know, what John has in mind is the kind of belief that leads to the. Or worship and adoration that will happen if you actually get who Jesus is. Because what the Holy Spirit does when he sits on the throne of our hearts is he transforms them to have an affection for Jesus that outpaces every other affection. Piper puts it this way, reflecting on this passage. I love this. He says, when you hear the testimony of Scripture that Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of the world, so this passage does your heart confess this truth that is. Do you gladly affirm the divine greatness of Christ, and how worthy he is of trust and admiration and loyalty and obedience? Does your heart exalt Christ as the greatest thing of all. For surely that is what it means to be the Son of God. I think Piper is right that this is what John's getting at, because this is the same John who heard Jesus say this in John. He says, 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. Now watch this. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. Do you? Are you catching what Jesus says is the key role of the Holy Spirit in this passage? It's to glorify and make much of Jesus Christ. It's to create not just the belief that Jesus existed and is who he says he is, but the kind of belief that sees Jesus as ultimately glorious, worthy of worship, the supreme treasure of our lives. What is the Holy Spirit like? You could almost say he is self effacing. You know, a self effacing person. That's someone who takes the light off of themselves to lift it onto others. A humble person, a person that's not about their own glory. And that is exactly what the Holy Spirit does in his core. I think the best picture of this is a spotlight, right? Imagine a spotlight. It's an intense, powerful beam of light. It is powerful. It is bright. It is in itself incredibly strong, but it doesn't shine on itself. It's not pointed at itself. Instead, it takes that powerful beam and it casts it onto someone else to highlight them and to mark them as especially significant, and to draw everyone's attention in the room to the person that spotlight shines upon it. I think that is the best image of the spirit because that is what he does. He powerfully shines a spotlight on the glory of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, the Son of God. And because of that, if you have the Holy Spirit in you, you also have a new superior love for Jesus in you. Those two things go together. It is the inevitable result of having the spirit that every genuine believer is marked by. Here's why this is so vital and why the spirit is so serious about doing this in us. Okay, if we have transformative belief in Jesus, if we see Jesus rightly and get it, we have everything we need as Christians. Because hear me on this real belief in Jesus transformative belief in Jesus belief that believes he is who he claimed to be and loves him supremely. That is the engine that pulls and empowers everything else in your Christian life. Everything okay? Think about it. Let's do a thought exercise. What would be true of you if, by the Holy Spirit you could honestly say, Jesus is the most beautiful thing in the world to you, you'd see more and more victory against the sins that dampen your joy. Because sin would look unappealing compared to Jesus, your ability to endure suffering would increase. Why? Because you'd view even that as a chance to grow you closer to the suffering servant. You'd start to experience a desire to feast on God's Word, because everything in Scripture points to and reveals Jesus, and you can't get enough of him. Evangelism would begin to become just a trait of your life, because we talk about what we love and worship the most. Your obedience to God would grow more and more throughout your life. Because we obey and serve what we love. Hear me. What each of us needs to live the Christian life more than impressive gifts, more than talents that are noticed by others, more than intelligence. Is this kind of transforming belief in Jesus? There is nothing more vital to our faith than this, because everything else flows from this. So if this is the first and most fundamental work of the spirit, here's the first and most important question. Do you have genuine, transformative belief in Jesus? I'm sure almost everyone, maybe not everyone, but almost everyone sitting in this room and say, yeah, I believe in Jesus, but I don't want to just know if you believe Jesus existed. Do you believe he's beautiful? Like, I don't want to. Just know if you believe in him. I want to know. Do you treasure him? Do you want him? Do you crave him? Do you see him as the most beautiful thing, the Son of God, the Savior of the world? Because that is a belief that is transformative. And it's that kind of belief in Jesus. The indwelling spirit creates when he rules and abides in our hearts. As we look at the other part of this passage, we see John give one other mark of the spirit in believers, and it's a mark that if you've been around these last few weeks, you'd have known John's drilling it into our heads over the last several weeks. Look at verses eleven through twelve and verse sixteen with me. This is what John says, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. Over and over again over these last few weeks, John's been stressing that genuine Christians possess in other worldly love for one another a love that comes from God, a love that is God centered, proactive, and sacrificial like Michael talked about last week. Most importantly, it's a love that cannot be mustered up from within ourselves. It's a love that comes from above. And here in this passage, what John is doing is it's almost like he's pulling the curtain back to show us. Do you know who the source and the creator of that kind of love in you is? It's the Holy Spirit. This is the second mark of the spirit in the lives of believers. John wants to highlight supernatural love for others. Supernatural love for others. In this passage, John introduces the truth that our power to love is not just mustered up by our own strength. It comes from the very Spirit of God in us. And what's really important for us to notice church and what I feel a burden for us for is that for John. And if you read the other New Testament authors, this supernatural love for others, this Christ like love, this unity among the people of God, this sacrificial, proactive love, this love that comes from above, it is so much greater on the scale of importance than so many other gifts of the spirit. We can often become obsessed with. Let me show you one other place. This is the case. Look at how the Apostle Paul warns the church of Corinth in first Corinthians Corinth. They had experienced incredible gifts of the spirit, which was not a bad thing. Speaking in tongues, healings, interpretation, prophecies, all these things. And yet Paul looks at this church and he's grieved because they were missing the fundamental work of the spirit that all the other gifts are meant to serve and prop up Christ like, sacrificial, outgoing love. Look at the end of first Corinthians twelve. Paul outlines a long list of gifts of the spirit. He says, are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? He's saying this might be the things the spirit gives to certain people. Not everyone though. But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. He's about to show us the most excellent way of the spirit in the life of every believer. And if you were Corinth at this time, you would have been hanging on to Paul's every word. Paul, we love gifts. Tell us the more. Excellent gift. What are you talking about? What's the more excellent gift? Thankfully, they didn't have to wait long because this is Paul's very next sentence. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I had prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and knowledge about all faith, to remove mountains, but have not love, I'm nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, if I'm a martyr for the Christian faith, but have not love, I'm nothing. Paul's telling Corinth you are missing it. It doesn't matter how impressive these other gifts you have are. If they are not in service to the greater gift of love, of the upbuilding, of the body of Christ, of displaying the cross centered love of Jesus. Now, as a brief aside, there is still a debate in the church today about, okay, what gifts from the Holy Spirit are still present and normal today, right? And there's one camp called Cessationist, which just means ceased. And they would say, okay, the Holy Spirit, he can still do miraculous things like healings, enabling missionaries to speak another language. But these aren't like normal gifts anymore. Believers typically experience. The other camp are called continuationists. Just saying. The gifts continue believing all of these should still be pursued today, and there are good and godly Christians on both sides of that. And there's a whole sermon we could preach on that there's a lot more we could say, and maybe we'll get into it on Beyond the Message, because I do think it's important. But for today and for John's passage, what I'm trying to help you see is that for John and Paul, whether you are a cessationist or continuationist, the most important foundational works of the spirit. Aren't those sign gifts but a treasuring of Jesus and an otherworldly, supernatural love for others? Before we even worry about those gifts, we need to focus on what is the Holy Spirit do in the life of every believer? What do John and Paul say are most important? Let's start there. And that is exactly what we're seeing from John and Paul. That Christian love for one another outweighs other spiritual gifts. But the question is why? And John doesn't want to leave us in the dark. He gives us a really powerful answer, a really imaginative, just like makes you think a great answer in verse twelve. Look at this verse with me. He says, no one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected or made complete in us. Uh, in this verse, John is saying something incredible happens when this kind of spirit filled love is lived out and walked out among the people of God. He's saying, do you know what you get to do when we do this? We make God's love visible and complete. We bring it to its proper end. God always planned for his love to be displayed in the life of the church, overflowing from the love of Jesus. And you actually get to make this love of God visible. God. He dwells in unapproachable light. He can't be seen by human eyes. But John is saying, when we love one another, we get to make the love of the invisible God visible. How does the world see and experience the love of God? How does God choose to make the fullness of his love felt and experienced by us? Through the God centered, proactive, sacrificial love of the church for one another. When I was younger, I loved playing with with invisible ink. Did anyone else ever have, like, invisible ink pens when they were younger? It's awesome. Write secret messages. There was nothing important on them. It was probably like I fed my dog today or something, you know? I don't know, but I loved writing on it because it's so cool that no one, no one can see it. And I'd get a pen that would write in ink and then shine an ultraviolet light on it. So the message was revealed. Now the message was there. It was written, it was waiting to be seen, but it was revealed or brought forth or made visible when the light shone on it. And in a similar way, God's saying, this is what I've chosen to do through my church. He's chosen for the church to almost be his ultraviolet light that reveals the very love for God in Christ. When we display this kind of love, we are revealing the invisible God. And that is why the Spirit's work of supernatural love within us that flows out of us is so important. It's what makes God's love tangible and visible. It's what displays the actual love of Christ to a watching world. It's what helps people know and experience the very love of God. It's what Jesus said. By this you will know you're my disciples, that you love one another. And if you still don't quite get her, it's not connecting. Why? This gift of love that the Holy Spirit gives is so important? Let me just point out one more thing. Without the Holy Spirit doing this in the early church, we wouldn't be here today because that kind of spirit empowered love. That was one of the key reasons the church of the first century spread throughout the entire world. Okay, the early church was not politically powerful in any way. It was politically persecuted. The early church wasn't popular or relevant. They were ostracized, sneered at. So how did Christianity become the largest religion in the world? There are several reasons, of course, but one of them is this the type of love the church displayed and walked in was completely unlike the world. While non-Christians deserted the unfortunate who contracted sicknesses and left even their friends to die, Christians would treat even their enemies, even becoming infected with the very diseases they were treating and dying for the very people they nursed back to life. While non-Christians threw female infants in the trash heap because of expensive dowries, and because daughters couldn't do anything for the family, from their point of view, Christians adopted them as their own. While non-Christians would only enter into fellowship with other people like them and their economic bracket who looked like them and talked like them, Christians invited anyone to come believe the gospel without distinction, which was so countercultural. Enemies of Christianity actually mocked them and said things like this Christians show they only want the foolish, dishonorable, stupid slaves, women and children. And do you know what Christians would say in response to this? They would say, exactly, because our lives are now about making the love of the cross visible and undeniable to the world. What happens when the love of God is made visible and complete in the church? The gospel is vindicated. It's lifted up to one another and to the world, and it's this kind of love that comes from the spirit and the Spirit of God alone. So it's worth asking, does our love in our church look more like that early church or more like the world today? Are we more captivated with smaller gifts of the spirit than this foundational gift of the spirit? Have we missed the point like Corinth? Or do we long to make God's love visible and complete? That's what spirit filled people do. So, Veritas, to go back to our earlier question, what does the Holy Spirit do in our lives? What does it look like when God's people are filled by God's Spirit? This is how you could say it. People filled by God's Spirit are people who experience a transformative belief in God's Son and a supernatural love for God's people. This is what the Holy Spirit does. It's worth noting before the Holy Spirit. Who are we? By nature, we are blind and selfish, unable to see and believe in the glory of Jesus and unable to love God's people. But what happens when the spirit rests upon a person in a church? We experience a radical, life changing, treasuring and belief in Jesus and a radically otherworldly, supernatural love. Have you experienced that? If not, I'm pleading with you. Don't leave today without asking God to save you, to change you by His Spirit, to give you a view of his glory, to make you treasure Christ, and to make you want to love as you have been loved. And for those of you in this room who have experienced that, who can say, I'm not impressive? I don't have a lot of other gifts, a lot of other talents. I'm not that smart, but I know this. I am obsessed with Jesus, I love Jesus, I want him, and I want others to know him. And I want others to experience the same love of the cross that I have felt. Hear me. I want you to recognize and rejoice of the Spirit's work in your very life and heart. You don't need other gifts of the spirit as evidence that he's active in you, because only the spirit can take a heart of stone and make it love Jesus and love his people. So with that said, where does that leave us this morning? Most. Most simply like, I hope this passage wakes us up to see our desperate need for God's Spirit. A different posture, because we can't manufacture this, we can't manufacture a treasuring of Jesus and a view of his glory. And we can't manufacture a sacrificial, supernatural love for others. It has to come from him. And if we try to do the Christian life or church without him, it might be externally successful and exciting, but it won't be spiritually good. You know, in the book of Zechariah, the prophet receives a vision of a rebuilt and restored city of God, and he sees people shining in glory, and he's saying, how is this going to happen? And after he sees this, God says this to Zechariah, this is the word of the Lord, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. What do we need most in this church? We don't need might or power. We don't need relevance from how the world defines it. We need God's Spirit. We need God's Spirit to see and savor Jesus. And we need God's Spirit to genuinely love one another as the body. And we need to wake up and see our desperate need for him in the Christian life. We can't do one thing without him. As we wake up and see our desperate need for God's Spirit, my hope is that we'd also become a more praying people that beg for God's Spirit. You know, Jesus says something really interesting in Luke eleven. He's teaching his disciples how to pray and what to pray for. And this is what he says. And he says, I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. And the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened. He says, what father among you, if his son asks for a fish instead, will give him a serpent. Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion. If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. Notice this how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? We often take this verse out of context, right? We apply it to anything and everything in life. But what does Jesus apply it to the Holy Spirit? Who does God love to pour his Spirit upon people who beg him for it? God loves to pour out His Spirit on really needy, really weak, really dependent people who see we desperately need him and people who say, God, unless you dwell in us and move in us and do this work. We're lost. How often do we get on our knees and just beg God for His spirit? And if your answer is is like mine, which is rarely, if at all, to be honest, what does that reveal about our pride and where we think our strength to live the Christian life comes from? Really? But what if we woke up to our need and saw him and begged for God's Spirit? Can you imagine what a church of people that said, I don't have a lot of things, but I love Jesus more than anything else and I want to bend that love towards other people. Can you imagine what would happen? We're going to pray for that in a moment, but I want to end by telling you a story. Just about two different churches. You know, when I graduated high school, I moved to Chicago, and after a little while, I chose a church that had all the things I was looking for as a high schooler. Okay. The pastors were relevant and cool and young. Their worship and tech really impressive. Their service was really slick and exciting and comfortable. But after being at that church for a while, I started to realize, I think I've been looking for all the wrong things because what the church was missing was a deep pursuit of the spirit. Jesus wasn't proclaimed and enjoyed and treasured for his own sake. He didn't fall heavily upon the congregation. He was just a means to a happier life in this life. They didn't really have sermons that exalted Christ in His glory. It felt a little more like Ted talks that aimed at felt needs. People weren't deeply loved. Instead, they were allowed to remain in queer sin, even volunteers. And they were viewed more as consumers to please than sheep to shepherd. Genuine, spirit filled belief in Jesus and genuine, spirit filled love for the body was almost absent. And over time my own soul start to feel those malnourished effects. So then I started looking for another church with with new values values I didn't think I had before. And the church I ended up with couldn't have been more different. Okay, there wasn't a full band. There was often a drum set and an acoustic guitar, which doesn't even sound very good together, and a really amateur sound mix. Okay, people didn't look like me. The lead pastor was the most normal person you could imagine. He was a mid-forties dad of four daughters. He lived in a small Chicago apartment, and he wore khakis and an old button up shirt every day. And we met in a really small, unfinished building, seventy to eighty people, where we did really ordinary things like just prayed together, heard our pastor preach verse by verse through the Bible, worshipped with cheap instruments, led by mediocre musicians, including myself. And we left for the day and there was nothing, maybe externally remarkable no one in the world would have pointed at and said, something's happening here. But something was happening because this church, as unremarkable as it was, had the Holy Spirit. Jesus was proclaimed and loved and adored, and our voices just drowned out those instruments. When God's Word was opened, people leaned in like they couldn't wait to hear more about the Christ who was everything to them. There's a reference. It wasn't dependent on how many people came in, but on the person we were worshipping. And not only was Jesus loved like people were loved, sins were confessed and challenged. People were prayed for. Ordinary people discipled ordinary people in the ordinary messes of their lives and figured it out together. Pastors were quick to give their time to meet with me and others when we had questions. Church members cared more about each other's holiness and their happiness. And God used that church. Not the impressive church, but this little spirit filled church to leave an imprint on my faith. What church do we want to be? Right? Because we can do church really well by external metrics fifteen years into this thing. Let's just be honest. We could aim if we wanted to. We could aim and set our sights on more than anything else. We want to be a big church. We want to be an impressive church. We want to be a liked church. We want to be a wealthy church. But if we are not a spirit filled church, one day we're going to wake up and realize none of that mattered. And that's not what I want for us. I want us to experience a transformative belief in Jesus and His supernatural love for one another. And I want us to see and need and beg for the spirit. So let's start right now by praying together God. In John three, Jesus says that the spirit is like wind who moves and blows where he may. And God, we can't manufacture you to come. We can't manufacture you to work. We just can raise our sails and say, please blow and move us where you want us to go. Lord, would you pour out your spirit on us? Not the kind of spirit that exalts ourselves or is exciting by worldly standards. Would you give us the spirit who loves to make much of Christ in everyday, ordinary things, and the spirit who loves to love others and reach out in Christ like sacrificial love? Lord, would you make us those people? Would you make us that church? We love you and we ask this in your name. Amen.