Confident in the Advocate

Welcome to Gospel and Life. What keeps your faith from unraveling when trouble comes your way? On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples to not let their hearts be afraid. Today, Tim Keller shows us how Jesus offers a new kind of confidence that is rooted in something far more secure than our circumstances. The reading for today is taken from the book of John chapter 14 verses 16 through 26. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them. One Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said, But Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own. They belong to the Father who sent me. All this I have spoken while still with you, but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. This is the word of the Lord. Let me, by the way, just underscore Abe's request for you to come to that town hall. These town halls are going to be very important this year, and I can remember some turning points in the history of Redeemer. Very often happen when people came together. In worship service, we're doing the main thing we do as a church. In town halls, we talk about the things we do in the church, and it'd be very important that you make it. Please do. I'll be any championship football next Sunday, I guarantee you. No distraction. Where Jesus Christ is equipping his disciples to go out into the world the night before he dies. It's John chapter 13 to 17. We're spending the entire year looking at this passage. But chapter 14 is kind of special in this way. Whenever, in the old tales, if they were going to send people out on a quest or a journey, they always gave them special gifts with special powers. So George McDonald in the late 19th century wrote two very well-known fairy tale books. The first one, one's called The Princess and the Goblins, and the other is called The Princess and Curdie. And in the first one, Irene gets a little magic ring that has an invisible thread attached to it that if you follow, will always take you to safety. In the second one, Curdie gets the ability to touch somebody's hands, you know, hold a hand or shake a hand, and immediately discern the person's true character and plans. And so these are ways in which our heroes get what they need in order to face the foes and to complete their quest. And actually, that's what Jesus is doing in chapter 14. He's sending his disciples, and that's us, out into the world, and he's giving them mighty gifts, mighty gifts with special powers. And of all the gifts that he gives, the greatest gift is this one, the one we just have been reading about. And I don't feel under any real pressure to tell you everything there is to know because this will keep coming up. This subject will keep coming up. Here's the first time we actually can address it. Jesus Christ gives his disciples, and to us, the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is the greatest gift possible, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Let's see what we learn even in this passage about who the Spirit is, what the Spirit does, and why the Spirit can do it. Who he is, what he does, and why he can do it. So first of all, who he is. I've already kind of let the cat out of the bag as it were with the title of this heading. The Spirit of God, according to the Bible, we're going to learn two things. Number one, the Spirit is a person. The Spirit is not just a force, not just an energy. The Spirit is a person. You know, the Greek nouns are assigned a gender, you know, masculine, feminine, neuter. The Greek noun for Spirit is neuter, but that doesn't matter. Jesus Christ deliberately breaks the conventions of grammar by continually referring to the Spirit as he. You can see it five times in verse 17. He, see, the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him for he lives with you and will be in you. So the Spirit is a person and you know, so it's as emphatic as possible that Jesus can make it, not just a kind of energy force or a force field, but another person, another like what? See, Jesus uses this word, we'll get back to it. He says he will give you another. I'm going away and he will give you another. Means another like Jesus, which is an astonishing thing to say. In fact, here's what's really interesting. The whole point of this discourse is Jesus keeps saying, I'm going away. I'm going away. I'm going away. And now he says in verse 17 and verse 16, but the Spirit will come. The Father will send him the Spirit. Okay. So I'm going away and he is coming, but then in verse 18, he says, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. What? I'm going away. He will come. But by the way, when he comes, I will be coming. The one who is not me is bringing me or another way to put it is, and he says it right here. He says the world will not see me, but you will see me. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is the way that Jesus Christ is present with us in not a bodily form and therefore not in a visible form. And so the Holy Spirit is a person. The Holy Spirit is a divine person like Jesus. The Holy Spirit in some ways is certainly is not Jesus, but in other ways brings Jesus. In fact, let's press it a little further down in verse 23. Jesus actually goes so far as to say, my Father will love them and we will come to him and make our home with him. And so here's what we got. I'm taking you right to the precipice, right to the edge of the doctrine of the Trinity, but don't be afraid. I'm not going to push you over into it. In other words, we're not going to go into the doctrine of the Trinity here, but you need to see this is the kind of material from which the biblical doctrine of the Trinity comes. And what is the biblical doctrine of the Trinity? It's unique in all the religions of the world. Christianity teaches that we don't have one God in one person who just takes different forms in different times. What do we have three gods in three persons? We have one God in three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who are all equally divine and who know and love each other. And for our purposes, there's so many implications, so wonderful things to talk about, but that's why I'm not pushing over the precipice into it. Instead, here's the thing you need to know, that when you get the Holy Spirit, you get God. That's the reason why Jesus is able to say, because I live, you will also live. He will be in you, and therefore you get the very life of God in you. So that's who the Spirit is, and his implications, as we will see, for what the Spirit does. So what does the Spirit do? The Holy Spirit, what does the Spirit come doing? In verse 26, all this I have spoken while still with you, but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, is whom the Father will send in my name. This isn't the only thing he does, but the point is, among other things, the Holy Spirit is an Advocate. Now many of you know that if you go to different passages, different translations, so in fact, this translation is the 1984 edition of the New International Version, where you have here the current edition of the New International Version. In my Bible, it says, the counselor, the Father will send the counselor, the Holy Spirit. In yours, it says the Advocate. Sometimes it says the Helper. Sometimes it says the Comforter. Right? Now, whenever you get to a word that every translation translates differently, you know you've got a kind of richness of meaning that it's impossible to get across into one English word. And I would actually, frankly, I vote for the Advocate. If I was going to choose one word, I would say that was my favorite for a lot of reasons. But we still have to reflect a little bit on it, at least because obviously it's got too much richness, not just to give you one word. So what is the Greek word behind the word Advocate, or counselor, or Comforter? And it's a Greek word, a pretty well, pretty famous, important Greek word in the New Testament, Parakaleo, or Paraklete. And it's even there, you can see, you can hear, right, that there's two parts to that word. And what's weird about it is they almost work against each other. Kaleo means to call, obviously, Kaleo, but it means to summons or to declare. It's kind of a confrontive word, kind of like in your face. It's very assertive, okay? But it starts with the prefix Para, which means to come alongside, which you see in our English words like paramedic or parod, legal. So if Kaleo is like in your face, it's a confrontive word almost, but Para is a supportive word. It's a sympathetic word. So Parakaleo seems to be both confrontive and supportive. And you say, well, how in the world can you combine those two in one person? And the answer is there's two different ways that I think you can, two different ways. The one is, the one is, there could be an advocate who confronts others for you, a defense attorney, as it were. So the person is confrontive, but for you. So the person is arguing with other people for you, making a case for you, arguing to others for you. That's a defense attorney. But there's a second way you could combine the two. And a defense attorney, call him a sober companion, the friend of an addict, because a sober companion and a friend of an addict argues with you for you, confronts you for you. See, a defense attorney confronts other people who might harm you for you. But a sober companion confronts things inside you that get harm you for you. The sober companion argues with you for you. So one kind of advocate is a defense attorney, one kind is a sober companion, one kind is arguing against others for you that could harm you, and the sober companion is arguing with things inside you that could harm you. And I'm here with some really good news. If you're a Christian, you believe in Jesus Christ, you get both. You get both kinds of advocates. You get the first advocate and the second advocate, and they are both divine. It's an astonishing claim. And by the way, not one I think that most Christians think about. In fact, probably I'm already using a lot of terminology that you're not used to, even if you've been a Christian or in the church for a long time. And yet it's an incredible gift. It's a mighty gift for our quest. We get two advocates, both kinds of advocates. Now, the Holy Spirit is the second kind. Who's the first kind? I'll get there in a minute. That's my third point. But we're still in the second point. The second point is what does the Holy Spirit do? The Holy Spirit is an advocate. That is, I'm going to say, according to the Bible, one of the things, not the only thing the Holy Spirit does, but the Holy Spirit, He confronts you. He argues with you for you. Or He argues with things and confronts the things inside you, but always for you. He's for you. How so? Well, let me give you one. Romans chapter 8, 15, 16. In Romans chapter 8, 15, it says this. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but He has given us the spirit of His Son, who comes into our hearts crying, Abba Father. Crying. I mean, there we go. Here's the Holy Spirit, speaking, crying, yelling, maybe. But it says, instead of fears, our hearts are subject to fears, but God gives us the Holy Spirit, who comes in and cries, Abba Father. What? What's that mean? Well, verse 16, I think, explains it. And in verse 16, it says, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our children that we are children of God. Amazing. Paul, when he writes this, is evoking a picture, because the word bears witness, and you can even tell in the English translation, which is good, that Paul is using a term that means expert testimony in a trial. In fact, star witness expert testimony in a trial. And so here, in just a stroke or two, Paul's essentially evoking, he's getting us to imagine a picture. The picture is there's a trial. And you're on trial. You're accused. And you're losing. And where is this trial? It's in your spirit. See, the spirit bears witness with your spirit. In your spirit, you're afraid, you're feeling guilty, you're feeling like a failure, whatever. There's a trial going on. There's an accusation. And you're losing. And then in comes the spirit with expert testimony, that you are a child of God. You say, well, that's an interesting idea. Well, you know, there's another very famous place where that happened, as it were, at the baptism of Jesus Christ. The heavens were ripped open, and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. And it doesn't just descend like a dove. And God was heard to say, what? This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And so you see, that's the spirit's job. The spirit, you're sinking under doubts and under fears. It's in your spirit. As it were, you're in a trial, and you're losing, and you're thinking I'm a failure, I've done this, I've done that wrong. And in comes the Holy Spirit says, no, you are his child. You are loved. He is well pleased with you. The job of the Holy Spirit is to come and argue with you. It's to come in and confront you. Especially as 1 John 3.20 says, when our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. Well, how does God overcome the condemnation of our hearts? With the Holy Spirit. When our hearts condemn us, the Holy Spirit is greater than our hearts. Look, human beings don't like the idea of salvation by grace. We don't like the idea of salvation by grace. Every religion in the world rejects it and says, you're saved by living a good life. And even Christianity, though it teaches we're saved by grace, Christians don't want to believe it. Our hearts don't want to believe it. That's why partly pride, but partly calculation. Because you know, if you've been good and you've tried your best and you said your prayers and you get to church, surely God owes you something. And that way, that's the reason why even Christians deepen our hearts when we become Christians, even those of us who say, oh, I believe we're saved by grace. Your heart doesn't believe that. It doesn't want to believe it and operates as if it's not true. And basically operates saying, well, because God has, you know, I've done this and I've done this and this, surely God owes me something. That's how you operate down deep. And then when you actually get out in life, you do fail. And bad things do happen. And you mess up and then you're in despair because deep in your heart, you actually don't believe you could be a child of God. Deep in your heart, you don't believe that. And the Holy Spirit comes in and says, yes, you are. You know, you're loved. He comes crying. God is your father. But by the way, a good sober companion doesn't just tell a person, a friend who feels he's worthless or she's worthless, that you, you know, you're loved. It's also sometimes you have to confront the person. I mean, in other words, the Holy Spirit's job is not just to confront our hearts when they accuse us. Holy spirits also got to confront our hearts when they tempt us because see, sometimes we go astray because we are underconfident in the love of God. But sometimes we go astray because we get a kind of spiritual overconfidence. And we say, oh, I can do this. I can have this sin. It's really not a sin or I kind of deserve it or I can always, you know, it won't harm me that much or I can ask for forgiveness later. You get a kind of spiritual overconfidence. And when the Holy Spirit sees our hearts being enticed by sex, money or power or other things, what's he do? You know, there's an interesting place in James chapter four. There's some controversy about how to understand it. But in James chapter four, James says, don't you realize that friendship with the world is enmity with God? And then he says, the next thing he says is, and that the spirit of God within you, uh, longs intensely. It's not an easy word to understand, but I like the commentators who say what is saying is that when the Holy Spirit sees the world enticing you away, it longs to bring you back. He longs to bring you back. And he says, no, no, no, no, no. You can't go there. Jonah is one of the most widely known stories in the Bible, but it's so much more than a simple account of a prophet who runs from God and gets swallowed by a great fish. In his book, Rediscovering Jonah, Tim Keller uncovers the deeper message of this familiar story, revealing how Jonah's resistance to God exposes our own reluctance to trust and obey him and how Jonah's experience ultimately points us to Jesus and his saving work on the cross. During the month of May, we'll send you a copy of Rediscovering Jonah is our thanks for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the transforming love of Christ with more people. So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. So you see that the Holy Spirit's job is to be yourself or companion is to say you're looking for love in all the wrong places, you're trying to earn your salvation, you don't believe you're really loved, you're not living as if you're loved, and stop it. You are loved. God says you are my beloved child, and I'm well pleased. Now, so that's what the Holy Spirit does, and it's a powerful, powerful thing. Let me just ask you a question. Have you got that in your life? And if you say, well, I don't know how that actually works. How does that actually work? Well, actually, the hints are here. He's a spirit of truth, and he's a person. See, you know, when you hear the term filled with a spirit, if you think of the spirit in personal terms, you can kind of think that that's a little bit like a gas tank being filled up with gas or a light bulb being filled with light. But if he's a person, how do you get filled with a person? And the answer is you get filled with a person by listening to the person, by spending time with the person, by talking with the person. And it says he's a spirit of truth, verse 17. And also, think, here's two verses for you. You know, Hebrews chapter 412 says the Bible, the Scripture, the Word of God is alive and active like a two-edged sword that penetrates. Do you know in Ephesians 6, it says that the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God? Now think about this. If it's the job of the Spirit to confront you, to deal with your doubts and your fears and your guilt and your underconfidence and your overconfidence, if it's the job of the Spirit for him to come in and shake you and say you're loved and he's against you for you, what is his ammunition? How does he speak to you? And the answer is the sword of the Spirit is the Word of God, the Bible. He brings the truth of the Bible home to the heart, so it melts the heart and it gets rid of the coldness and it gets rid of the fears, gets rid of the doubts, gets rid of the hubris, it gets rid of the hardness. So if you say, well, I'd love to have the work of the Spirit in my life, I would love to have him as the second advocate, well, you've got to know the Bible. Because the more the Bible you know, the more ammunition you're giving your sober companion. And it's all the ammunition of love. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. But more specifically, now here's our, we looked at who he was and what he does, but more specifically, why is he able to do it? Why is he able to do this? And the answer is the work of the second advocate is to apply the work of the first advocate to our hearts. It's not just that he applies the Bible in some kind of general way. Jesus says in verse 16, I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate, which means he's the first one. And then down in verse 26, it says, the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. There it is. The work of the second advocate is to take the truth of the first advocate, the gospel of the first advocate. His being, his person, his work, his teachings. Jesus is the first advocate and it's the work of the Holy Spirit to take the work of the first advocate, apply it to your heart and that's how you get the power. And that's how you get filled with the Holy Spirit. When you say, well, what is the work of the first advocate? Well, this text doesn't tell us, but we can't understand the power of this text unless we go to places where it does. Now here's the good news, is that John himself, John wrote the book of John, the gospel of John, but he also wrote three letters in the Bible, first, second, third John, and in first John he explains what he means by the word advocate here. And in first John chapter two, verse one, very simple, he says, John says, don't sin, please avoid sin, but then he says, but if you do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. We have an advocate with the Father, with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And in Hebrews seven and Romans eight, Paul in the book, the Hebrew writer says that in a sense, God the Father sits on the judgment seat of the universe and Jesus Christ the Son intercedes for us. He argues for us. He makes his case for us. He intercedes for us. So here's Jesus, here's John, here's Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews, and here's Paul all saying that the work of the first advocate is for Jesus Christ to stand as an advocate before the bar of God and the justice of the universe and be as it were our defense attorney. Now, let me just, let's unpack that for a second, but first let me just say this. We're talking here about something very mysteriously, something very deep that happens in the Godhead through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. How can a holy and just God embrace unholy and flawed human beings? How can a holy and just God, don't you want a God who believes in justice? Well then how can God give us things we don't deserve forever? How can he do that? Something has to happen inside of God to enable that to happen for his justness and his holiness and his love to be reconciled. That happens on the cross. Well what we're being told here is the best way for us to grasp the wonder of it and the power of it is to understand this metaphor, the metaphor of Jesus Christ standing before the judgment seat of the universe, interceding on our behalf. That's the metaphor we're asked to ponder. The Bible's asking us to ponder, so let's ponder it. There's two parts to it. The first part is this idea that there is a judgment bar of the universe before which we all stand accountable. That's the first part of the metaphor and that's not an easy sell today. It is not an easy sell at all. We live in an era that says that's the way people used to believe. People used to believe that there was a judgment seat outside of us, some standard that we're all obliged to obey, some standard that we're all accountable to. It might be the law of God, judgment seat of the universe, it might be Plato's realm of ideas, but we used to believe, it is said, that there was a kind of external moral set of moral absolutes that we're all accountable to, but we don't believe that anymore. We believe that all moral discrimination and intuitions come from inside. We feel these things, we do these things, we create these things, and so there's nothing outside that we're accountable to. It's inside, we decide what is right or wrong for us, and therefore guilt is nothing but psychological. It's only subjective, it's never objective. It's a subjective feeling you have, which you can get rid of if you just change your views. There's nothing out here that objectively makes us guilty. Now, you know, Friedrich Nietzsche said he thought the whole idea of guilt would go away when people stop believing in God. Freud knew better, and his great book, and very gloomy book, Civilization and Assist Contents, even though Freud himself was an atheist, he says it's kind of weird, but even when you deny guilt and even when you say it's all in my head, and even when you try to say, well, there's no God so there really isn't any kind of guilt other than psychological subjective guilt, he says all that seems to do is drive it in deeper, and it still affects your life, but you don't have a word for it anymore, and so you actually don't have any way to dealing with it. Freud was pretty smart about those things, and here's the fact. He's not gone away. Mental health experts will tell you, even though there's few and fewer people believe in God, it doesn't go away, and it doesn't go away in people who don't believe in God either. There is still a sense that we're not what we should be, and no matter how hard we try to change our psychology, we can't get rid of it. There still is a sense that what the Bible says is true, and that is there is a bar of justice, there is a bench of justice. There's a seat of justice before which we are all accountable, and nobody, nobody on the final day will be able to stand before that bar of judgment and pass the test. That's the first part of the metaphor. Second part of the metaphor is this, that if you're a Christian, the minute you become a Christian, Jesus Christ stands as your representative, as your defense attorney before that bar of justice. Now, I got to tell you, when I first became a Christian, I heard about this, I read about this, that Jesus Christ stands before the judgment seat of God and intercedes for us, but I really had no idea what that was. It was kind of strange, frankly, and almost like there's something weird going on here, you know, and I really didn't understand it, but I said okay, and I think probably about five or six years into my being a Christian, I read a sermon, or actually it was more of an outline of a sermon by a man named Charles Hodge, who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1840s, I think it's the way he did it, and it was a little, it was a chapel talk on the intercession of Christ, and it just, it just changed me. I'll show you why. First of all, he said, this idea that Jesus is an advocate or a defense attorney means at least two things. It means that he appears to the court, not you, if you're a Christian, and secondly, he's got an infallible case. The first is, he appears in the court, and he says, imagine, let's just say, if you go to trial because you've been accused of something, and you've got a great defense attorney, you're in good shape, you know why? Because there's a certain sense in which the court doesn't really see you, the court sees your attorney. If your attorney is eloquent, you're eloquent. If your attorney is savvy, you're savvy. If your attorney is stupid, you're stupid. If your attorney succeeds, you succeed. If your attorney fails, you fail. And as Charles Lodge says, you're lost in your advocate. You're like in your advocate. You're not seen, you're not heard. You don't succeed, you don't fail. Your advocate does. And that means at least this. See, this means that all your flaws, if you're a Christian, all your flaws, all your sins, all your stains on your soul, they don't appear as it were before God. Those perfect eyes of the judge of all the earth who see through everything and see everything you've ever done and see every thought you've ever had. And they see everything. When they see you in Jesus Christ, they see nothing but perfect beauty. You're lost in your advocate. That's the first thing that I learned from Charles Lodge. The second thing I learned though was this, that a good defense attorney is up there not just hoping and pleading that the judge and the jury will somehow let his client off, but that the lawyer has a case. See, Charles Lodge says it's not the job of the attorney just to hope that somehow they'll let the client off. The attorney has to come in and say, my client should be acquitted because of the law. According to the law, my client should go free. That's what an attorney does. And that Jesus Christ is not, Lodge said, up there begging for mercy. Jesus Christ is demanding justice. Now that was something that was an absolute game changer for me because I'd actually thought, some of you heard me say this before, I always thought that Jesus Christ interceding for me meant that every day Jesus got up and went up to see the father and said, you know about Tim Keller, you remember, you know how he always is promising never to do that again? Well, he has done it again. And actually since he's become a Christian, I'm guessing this is something like four dozen times now. The father says, Jesus, I represent Tim Keller here and because of our relationship, because I'm your son, you're my father, would you please give him a break and just overlook it one more time? And I guess I thought the father was saying, well, all right, okay, one more time. And even with Jesus, even with the son and the father, you wonder, how long can that last? I mean, that didn't make me feel very confident that every day Jesus was trying to get me off the hook. I mean, I'm not a God. But then Charles Hodge came and waited, wait, wait, wait a minute. And think, listen, listen, everybody. Hebrews chapter 12 talks about the blood of Jesus Christ speaking. When God comes to Cain in Genesis four after Cain is killed able, what does God say to Cain? He says, the blood of your brother able cries out to me from the ground. In other words, the blood of able was crying for vengeance, for punishment, for retribution. But it says in actually, in chapter 12 of Hebrews, it says, we come to the blood of Jesus Christ, which speaks a better word, it says, than the blood of able, which means the blood of Jesus Christ is crying too, as it were. And what does that mean? What all these metaphors means? Here's what it means. Jesus Christ is getting up in front of, if you are a Christian, then Jesus Christ every day as it were, metaphorically, stands before the Father and says, my people have lied, my people have cheated, my people have failed again today, my people have been selfish. They have sinned again. And Father, the wages of sin is death, but I've paid those wages. They have incurred debts, but I have paid their debts. Here's my blood. And it would be unjust to have two payments for the same debt. And therefore, because I have died, I demand acquittal from my clients. I'm not begging for mercy. I'm demanding justice. It would be unjust for you not to receive them. That is an infallible case. And don't you see, the more you are able to understand the work of the first advocate, the more powerful the work of the second advocate in your life. See, the second advocate, it says, what's the job of the second advocate? He will come and teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you and everything I've done. So what happened to me when I was just reading this thing by Charles Hodge, I suddenly realized, you know, I doubled my appreciation for what it means for Jesus Christ to be my advocate. When I saw what Jesus Christ has done for me, and the minute that happened, the Holy Spirit now had more ammunition. His sword was far sharper. And the Holy Spirit can come after us. When you understand the work of the first advocate, the Holy Spirit can come in and say, you are loved. You are, see how unconditionally you are loved. See how radically you're accepted. Stop trying to save yourself. Stop trying to look for love in all the wrong places. Stop working yourself to death. Stop staying in relationships that you really should get out of because you're so needy. Live loved. See who you are. You are my beloved child and whom I'm well pleased. Look at what Jesus Christ has done for you. He's confronting you. And confronting you and confronting you until you are filled with delight and glory. There was a, you know, I sometimes refer to it because it's too good. There was an 18th century preacher who, when he was still a teenager, had a weird experience. He wasn't a Christian. He had an experience where he saw an old woman who was, everybody was standing around her bed and she was dying and they thought she was unconscious. She was about to die and they were standing around her bed and didn't think she could hear them and said, what a horrible life she'd had. You know, two husbands died on her. She was constantly sick and she's dying without a penny. And just before she died, she opened her eyes. She had heard them and she said, how can you call me poor? I am rich. And today I will stand before him bold as a lion. You see, if she'd had a few more, a little more breaths, you could have said this. I lost two husbands, but I have the one husband that can never die. I have no money, but I have the real wealth, the only wealth that nobody can take away from me. And I've been sick, but Jesus Christ long ago dealt with the only sickness, the only disease that could really kill me, which is my sin. And therefore I will stand before him bold as a lion. See, I will stand before him bold as a lion. The second advocate was telling her about the first advocate's work and that's why she gets, I'm not afraid of dying. Now let the, believe in Jesus Christ. Ask God to accept you because of the work of the first advocate. Receive the Holy Spirit and let the Holy Spirit talk to you about the second advocate to talk about the work of the first advocate. Give him ammunition. Study the word of God. Learn the gospel so that you can live all of your life bold as a lion. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the wonder of this promise and the greatness of the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this is just the beginning of all the things the Holy Spirit brings to us. Holy Spirit, have power in our lives, get glory in our lives and show us the glory of the first advocate, Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life Podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. And to find more great Gospel-centered content by Tim Keller anytime, visit gospelinlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2017. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life Podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was Senior Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.