Emmanuel's Promise

All right, we're gonna turn to John chapter 14, and this is gonna be what you call a textual topical sermon. So it's both the texts, but we're not gonna even get through all this text, okay?

It's loaded. Okay, John 14, verses 16 and 17, when Jesus is teaching his disciples about his relationship to the Father, Son, and the Spirit, and our relationship to all three, Jesus says this, "'I will ask the Father, "'and He will give you another Helper, "'that He may be with you forever, "'that is, the Spirit of truth, "'whom the world cannot receive "'because it does not see Him or know Him, "'but you know Him because He abides with you "'and will be in you.'" Let us pray. Our God and Father, we thank you for the fact that you are so gracious, even to call us your own children, even to call us out of our own darkness and our own willful sin, to bring us to yourself and raise up a people to glorify your name. Father, may your Holy Spirit speak to us tonight and fill our hearts with gratitude for you, and praise you, and praise you throughout the week for who you are and what you have done and what you will be doing. We give you thanks now. Bless us with your word by your Spirit. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. I need new glasses or a higher pulpit.

I can't have figured out which one it is, but anyway. But as we look at this scripture tonight, it's really exciting because I picked up on this thought and this theme because when we did this covenant, our covenant, God in the Sunday school class, it just came back to me, well, Jesus is our Emmanuel, and one professor once said that it is the Emmanuel principle and I thought, no, it's Emmanuel's promise that really is outstanding and something to remember all through our lives, and Jesus is teaching that here. But you know, from the time of Adam until the second Adam comes, or we see the second Adam in heaven, the Bible is just full of themes, and this is one of the major themes that is highlighted all through the word of God. God's promises to you as believers, and those who are not believers, this is why you should think twice and say, hey, maybe I do need a relationship with this living God because he makes tremendous promises. God's promises in Christ are forever about his grace and as he's promising his enduring presence until we go see him in heaven.

And no one has ever made any such promise like this but Jesus Christ, no one, no philosopher, no religious leader, only Christ promises you this because he's the only one who can because there is only one triune God. So we're going to look at several things tonight. First, we're gonna kind of look back at the past and what God said before Christ came and taught specifically this passage of scripture we're reading tonight. Then we're gonna look at what Jesus was saying and really only gonna cover pretty much just verse 16.

There's just too much here. And then we're going to look at what God is doing and has done and promised after Christ ascended into heaven and even until our day and age, okay? So we got those sort of time periods but it's three different ways to look at this and see what God has done in our lives and will be doing. So Emmanuel's promise is God's forever plans to be with his people. It's his plan.

And it's amazing what he's done. But you know, when we look back at what happened before the time of Christ, before Christ taught on this subject, we can go back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but we're gonna go back beyond that. You remember there was a time. There was a time, there was a perfect time. A time when there was fellowship with God all day.

There was fellowship with God all day long and there was no hindrance to those days. Yeah, there was such a time when God walked with man. There was such a time when Adam walked perfectly with God and then Adam and Eve walked perfectly with God.

When there was a time when God was man's best friend and there was no hindrances and they walked in the Garden of Eden, but that time was lost. And when it was lost, God immediately began to repair the damage that man and Adam and Eve had done. And he's been repairing it ever since and he's given us Emmanuel's promise.

Let's jump to Abraham. Abraham really trusted in the Lord. God gave him saving faith. God poured out his grace on him. He trusted in the Lord and he had a unique relationship and God promised him. He said that he would be with him.

He would be his shield. He would bless him in whatever he did, wherever he went. And Abraham walked with God.

He was known as the friend of God. And the promise was also made that God would be with his son, Isaac, and then Jacob. So let's just look a minute at a few verses of scripture where God is talking to Isaac and recalls both the promise to Abraham and Isaac.

This is in Genesis 26, verse three through five. He says to Isaac about the promised land. He says, sojourn in this land and I will be with you and bless you for to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and will give your descendants all these lands and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. So God was making this promise to Isaac and he was reminding him that his father Abraham had been to receive the same promise and now God was reminding Isaac also that his father, because of God working in his heart, had lived a life pretty much of a strong obedience, not perfect obedience, but strong obedience and that's why God continued to bless him. So it's kind of, of course he blessed him but he didn't earn it but it's just simply God's grace. And so when we think about God's call here, God chose to bless Abraham. He chose to raise up this family that would walk with him in obedience and he makes this promise to Abraham because there is a devotional heart in the body of Abraham, he's committed to him. If you're rebelling against God, of course you're pushing him away, then of course how can he be with you? But if you draw near to him by his grace as he woos you and calls you, yes, walk with him and he's gonna be blessing you. And so the same promise is renewed again to Abraham, Isaac, and then the grandson of Abraham, Jacob.

So when we turn to Genesis 28, verse 12 and following, here's what we read. Now you remember Jacob was a rascal. He was like a lot of people in the room here but he was a rascal and he tried to get blessings by his own power. You ever thought about doing that?

I think about that a lot, unfortunately. Okay, here's what God, Jacob's having a vision, he's running away, he's sleeping on a stone for his pillow and here's what God says to him in this vision. He, Jacob, had a dream and behold, a ladder was set on the earth and with his top reaching to heaven and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it and behold, the Lord stood above it and said to him, I am the Lord, the God of your father, Abraham and the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your descendants after you.

Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you. What a promise he is, that's the Immanuel promise. Jacob thought he could get the blessings by deceiving his brother Isaac and even his father, his brother Esau and his father Isaac and he went about it that way but now God is pointing out to him in this vision, no, the real blessings that last, that are eternal, that are really good, that really enrich the heart, all come from God in heaven and so God is promising him that he can trust the living God, that God will be with him and God's word is trustworthy. God's dealings with him are pure and they're dependable and so Jacob was taught that he could trust God's covenant promises, God was going to be with him.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all these men and many like them were blessed because their faith was in the living God. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were protected by God, they were assured of God's presence, they were promised lasting blessings and their life experiences shows us the faithfulness of God to keep his promise to be with us, with every single believer but the covenant promises of Immanuel never cease, they don't cease. If you jump ahead way over to Moses and Joshua, you see the same promise popping up again in Joshua chapter one, five, six and seven, those verses there, I'm gonna read those to you. Joshua knows he's facing a tough time when he's gonna go in and take the promised land, it's already promised but he's got to do the work. So God says to him, "'No man will be able to stand before you "'all the days of your life, "'just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you.

"'I will not fail you or forsake you. "'Be strong and courageous, "'for you shall give this people possession of the land, "'which I swore to their fathers to give them. "'Only be strong and very courageous, "'be careful to do according to all the law, "'which Moses my servant commanded you, "'do not turn from it to the right or to the left "'so that you may have success wherever you go.'" There's a guy named, some commentary writers named James Faucet and Brown and they point out that Joshua's success was based on a couple of things. First, it was based on the certainty that God was gonna make it happen, that God had promised Joshua that he would remove the perverse pagan rulers of those lands, those who had desecrated the earth and desecrated the human life. But also God's blessings were on Joshua because like Moses, he had a heart to keep the moral law. He had a heart to keep the norms and the customs that God had commanded him. Joshua's heart was there. He knew that they needed to be a holy people and he wanted to be holy before the Lord. That's why God's blessings were there because there was that relationship, that saving relationship and God had put these desires in the heart of Joshua.

Joshua knew he was not the leader that Moses was. But God reassured him that he would have success and it was Immanuel's promise that we repeated. He said, just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Does that not remind you of Matthew 28, where Jesus says that he will be with you until the end of the age?

The same Immanuel promise. So this brings us to the second point of this sermon and we've looked at what God was promising all the time to the patriarchs and he was fulfilling. He was with them, all these believers. Now we're gonna look at Christ's particular statements as he's standing there and teaching the disciples, his own disciples about what's going to happen and he's promising them the coming of the person of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus says, look at verse 16.

Now we're gonna go over a few words here that are very important. And Jesus says he will ask the Father, he will ask the Holy Spirit to bless them and to come and be with them. Now there are a couple meanings for the word ask in here. One is like the word that we use when Jesus says, if we ask or we're to ask him for anything in his name, it means that we ask in the sense that we are the inferior, he's the superior, we're the servants, he's the master, so we ask in a sense, okay, Lord, would you do this?

We plead with God. But there's a little bit difference in the words that use here that Jesus used when he says, I will ask, it means I will pray, I will request, I will entreat and I like to think about this in sort of some military jargon. Jesus has the power to requisition. He is not down here as the servant, he's up here as the second person in the Trinity, he can requisition and he can ask the Father and God the Father, of course, gives it to him because they are one in a Trinity. So this is telling us in this verse that the Father and the Son are going to send to us the person of the Holy Spirit to live in us. Jesus does another thing here.

You notice the next line, it says, and he will give you another helper. So here we come to another word that's very important, the word another. There are two words for another. One word, another, in the Greek language is eteron and it means, it's another, but it's different. I can give you another present, but every different present, I can give you another thing, but it'll be different from the first one. There's a difference, another. But then the word that Jesus uses here is allon and that means another that is similar, it's like.

So there's quite a difference in the meaning there. So what Jesus is saying is, I'm going to send you one who is like the Father, like the Son and he's going to be the Holy Spirit. And so God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are equal in power and glory.

They're the same nature, the same essence, but they're different persons. So the third person of the Trinity is going to be sent to us, to believers in a special way. So the promise is Jesus is making is I will be with you. So who is sent? The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity.

He will be sent after Christ ascends into heaven in a very special way. So now there are multiple verses of scripture that remind us that the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in the believer. 1 Corinthians 3, 16. Do you not know that you are a temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you? Or verse 1 Corinthians 6, 19. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have from God and that you are not your own? 2 Corinthians 16, 6, 16 says this. Oh, what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, just as God said, I will dwell in them and walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Those are Emmanuel promises coming from our Lord and reiterated by the teachings of all in the New Testament that the Holy Spirit comes and lives inside the believer. Now, if you look at the immediate context and verse chapter 14 of John and you drop down to verse 20, it says this. In that day, you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.

What day is that? That's pointing to the day of Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit came down in a special way, in a very public way to people from all over the Roman Empire of different languages, different ethnic groups, it was basically saying publicly the Holy Spirit is there, the Christ is there for the world to come to faith in him and find salvation in the only Savior and Lord that exists, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this was a testimony to the world. Now, what is the work that we're talking about here of the Holy Spirit? Well, the first thing we see is that he is going to send a helper or the term is translated comforter, and that's very important. The Greek word for that is the word parakle, which means somebody who comes alongside you, just steps right up.

They're not miles away, they're not just talking and say, I'll help you move, but they actually come and come along beside you and they're actually helping you. And if you look in the margin, some of you in the margins of your Bible, or maybe the footnotes at the bottom, where it says parakle, if you have a concordance there in the center, it may tell you that there are two or three nuances to this word, two or three ways you can translate the word parakle, and we're gonna talk about those. The first meaning is that, yes, he is the comforter, he is the helper. That means he is right there with us and he is framing our under, there's one verse of scripture that kind of frames our understanding of this. John, when he was writing in chapter seven, verses 38, he quotes Jesus, and then he gives his commentary on this. Listen to this, John chapter seven, verse 38, this is what Jesus says. He who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. Then verse 39, John comments on it, he says this. But this he spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believe in him were to receive, for the Spirit was not yet given, but Jesus, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

So this is the work of the Spirit, the comforter, the helper, who is gonna be like living water in your own life, in your own soul. So that is one meaning, the comforter is coming, the helper is coming. But there's a second meaning, and that is the meaning, it's a legal term. It means legal counsel or an advocate. Sinclair Ferguson in his Ligonier teaching mentions this term, as Pericles says, it is a legal term, and it's used in judicial cases, but not in the way we use it.

You're not gonna go see Collins, Collins and Bradford, whatever, attorneys at law, that is not how this is structured, that's our structure. But in the Roman Empire, there was a different structure, and what that meant was, it's pretty accurate as to the meaning of the word Pericles. It means that if you were in trouble, you would go get your lifelong best friend, or a long-term friend who knew you, and they would come, and just as a private citizen, they would say, they would advocate for you, and say, look, I know this person's character. They have lived a moral life for years and years, so there is your advocate, they're interceding for you. And that is the work of the Holy Spirit. When Satan accuses you, when he speaks to you, and accuses you, and says, oh, you sinned this week, you're not worthy, you need to just go sit down and don't talk about Jesus anymore. You can't be forgiven.

Do you remember what you did 20 years ago? Yeah, okay, that's what Satan does. He is the accuser, but Jesus Christ says, said the Holy Spirit living in you is your advocate. He's going to reassure you that you are his child. You have standing with Christ. He's paid for your sins, and he's gonna counsel against those lies that you're hearing. Another factor is that if you notice later on in John, he says that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of judgment and sin. So the Holy Spirit is working in the life of a believer to reassure them, but also to the unbelieving world, he's there convicting them.

All kind of legal judicial processes are saying you're either in guilt before the Lord, or you're forgiven, and you're protected. And so that's the second meaning. The Holy Spirit is your advocate, working in your heart.

Okay, the third meaning is that for the paraclete, or is it for this word, is that he is an intercessor. You know, sometimes when we gather and we meet, and we have times of prayer, and you'll hear people say, Father, send your spirit to comfort this person. Be with them in this difficulty, or with this family. We are asking God's spirit to do that.

Well, that's what he does. But specifically, if you look at Romans 8, 26, Paul is writing there to the Romans, and it says this. In the same way, the spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. He is looking at who we are.

We're flesh and blood. Sometimes we don't know how to pray. We don't know what to pray. We don't understand our situation. We're bewildered, but yet the Holy Spirit intercedes for us.

He's our intercessor. So the Paraclete does come alongside us as Jesus promised. He comforts us, he defends us against false accusation, and he intercedes for us.

Now I want to double down on something. I'm using that term double down, because it just tries to emphasize some other things that we're gonna see here about who God is, because if you read through John chapter 14, 15, 16, 17, Christ is just talking about the relationship of the Father, Son, and the Spirit, but his relationship to us and him being in us and us being a part of his kingdom and his children. It's a tremendous segment of scripture that just is overloaded with God's blessings. So as we think about this, well, Jesus said he was going to be with us, but Jesus is in heaven. He ascended into the heaven.

So how is he gonna be with us? Well, he sent the Holy Spirit, who is one of the persons of the Trinity, and who is equal in power and glory in nature, just like the Father and the Son. So that is how the Emmanuel promise is going to be fulfilled. However, there are some other things that are true about this promise. When Jesus was teaching this passage here in John 16, who is Jesus to the disciples?

How do they see him? Well, look at John 14, one, very common verse of scripture. Jesus, and it's usually used, when we're grieving over something, he says, do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me, for I go to prepare a place for you. Now Jesus is telling the disciples, and he says, I am going to, in the future, go and prepare for you. You're here on earth, but I am in heaven doing what? I am preparing for you.

I am not static, I'm working for you in heaven. Well, and when we get over to 2 Corinthians chapter one, it says, our God is the God of all comfort. Or when you think about Christmas, and we read about Isaiah 41, it says, comfort ye, comfort ye my people.

This is the coming of the Messiah. This is the work of the Lord. So our Lord is our helper in heaven. He's our comforter in heaven. And the Holy Spirit is the comforter within us. So Jesus is our comforter working from heaven, and the Holy Spirit is the comforter working inside of us.

So double down again. Jesus promises to be with us, but Jesus is also our legal counsel. He is our paraclete in that way. He is our advocate. And we know that when we read 1 John chapter two, verse one, we quote this many times. My little children, John writes, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin or continue in sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. The word advocate there is the same word used that Jesus is using here in John 14, 16.

It's the word paraclete. So what does this say? Wow. We have an advocate in heaven before the Father who is Jesus Christ, and we have an advocate living in us who is the Holy Spirit. That is amazing. This is teaching us more of the depth of the love of God he has for us that he is putting out, pouring out so many riches on us that we cannot imagine them. We have, he's representing us in heaven and God is representing us on this earth by his Spirit. But there's a third time Jesus doubled down here. And that is the promise to be with us. It plainly says in John 14, 16, I will ask the Father.

Then look at verse 13 and 14 in that same chapter. Verse 13 says, whatever you ask in my name, that will I do so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

Who will do it? Jesus will do it. That's why we pray in his name. He's told us to pray in his name because we appeal to him. Well, the Holy Spirit is our intercessor and Jesus is our intercessor.

He's doubling down. There's another verse I just found out that someone read to me this week. And that is Hebrews 7, verse 25.

It's very interesting. It says this, therefore he, Jesus, is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. God is our intercessor. Christ is our intercessor. The Holy Spirit is our intercessor. So Jesus is now in heaven hearing our prayers and presenting them to the Father. And the same time, the Holy Spirit, our intercessor, is in us, interceding for us, helping us to pray and praying when we don't know how to put things in word. He's there helping. So when you go back and read John 14, 15, 16, 17, read them as a unit.

It's just full of things about the living God, about the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that we are in him and him in us. Okay, we've talked about the fact that the Trinity, the Father and Son, the Father and the Spirit, are our helper, our legal counsel and advocate, and our intercessor. But you know, after Christ ascended into heaven, we're still here, right? But is he with you? Is he with you? Yes, he's with you. If you're a believer, he's with you, he's in you. And that's what he's trying to reassure us of in this passage. I think most people in this room could probably think about a very simple time, maybe when you were observing something in nature, and it just reminded you of the fact that God was with you.

Or maybe there's more dramatic experience that demonstrated some memorable thing. Oh, I know God was with me. He answered that prayer in some way. So I got an assignment for you after the benediction, or after closing prayer tonight. I don't want you to get up and talk about sports. I don't want you to talk about whatever is gonna happen this week. I want you to turn to the next person.

This is your assignment. I want you to turn to the next person, or whoever, if you're listening, turn to the next person next to you and say, in four or five sentences, I remember the time that God was with me. Share that with your brothers and sisters. I challenge you to do that when we close the service.

All right, so let me give you a personal illustration talking about my weakness of faith, okay? So I remember the time, years ago, when, well, some of you have done this. You've probably boarded that plane, or that ship, and you got on that plane and ship and said, will I make it back home? And when I get back home, will all these people be there? You ever had those thoughts, that sinking feeling inside of you?

And yet God has said, he's going to be with you. Well, Martha and I were headed to Asia as a family. She'd already been to Asia in 1982, but this time was different. We were dragging a couple of grandkids away from some grandparents, and you know how that can be. They didn't want to see them go. So here we go, and we're going to go. We've left one airport. Now we're down in Atlanta, and we're walking down the Atlanta airport to go in and go to our gate to get on the plane to go to Asia, and I'm sitting there thinking, I can go a lot of places by myself, but you know, I've got a family here. There's a little apprehension there, a little bit of a concern, but as we were going by, it had been raining that day, and I looked out, there's those big windows on the side there, and look, the rain just shining there on the tarmac, and there was this plane there, and there were these huge men. I mean, they were huge, getting on this airplane.

It was the Atlanta Falcons. It's okay, but that wasn't the thing. The rain had ceased, and above that plane, in abundance of color, was this rainbow. I said, he promised Noah. He kept his promises to Noah and the earth.

He's gonna keep his promises to me, but that wasn't all. God knew my weakness, and he was sending me a message. There were two rainbows in the sky that day, and I said, man, God knows I really need a reassurance. Where's my faith? But he has to stick these things in the clouds to remind me that Jesus shed his blood for me, and he promised to be with me and be with our family, and it's true.

So you may have had those experiences too. Just a little moment of reminder. God is with you.

Share those after their service. Okay, now the apostle Paul, now he was one, I think, one of our heroes in Scripture, but you know, he had moments when he struggled. Is God really with me?

I'm having a tough time. In Acts chapter 16, we know that Paul had gone to, he'd gone to Philippi, and there we believe that Lydia was the first convert we know of probably in Europe, in that part of the world. And so he was in Philippi, and he's preaching and teaching there. He's in a synagogue, and people come along, and they get upset, and some of the Jewish people there just have a riot, and most thing you know, Paul and Silas are being drug to a court, and they're drug into prison, and they're actually beaten, but they're beaten with rods. It was not a picnic.

It was tough. Well, after they got out of jail, they left, and they went over to Thessalonica, and then in Thessalonica, they were preaching and teaching there in a synagogue, and then the people, some of the people rose up and started to riot, and they were thrown out of Thessalonica, but when they got to Berea, they were teaching in a synagogue, and the people in the synagogue picked up their Old Testaments, and they said, wait a minute, what he's saying about the Messiah in the Old Testament? Hey, it's true, this must be Jesus, but guess what? The people from Thessalonica followed them to Berea, and they ran them out of Berea, so then Paul went to Athens, and finally, he ends up in Corinth, and so he's in Corinth, and so Acts 18. We're gonna read a little bit about that, Paul's situation there. Verse seven, they had just left there, just left there, and they came into Corinth, and it begins this way. Then he left there and went to the house of a man named Titus Justice, a worshiper of God whose house was next to the synagogue. Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians, when they heard, were believing and being baptized, and the Lord said to Paul in a night-by-night vision, do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city, and he settled there a year and six months teaching the word of God among them. Paul needed that reassurance like we need those reassurances, and he recognized that this was God's Emmanuel promise.

I will be with you, and no man in this city will be able to harm you or attack you. That's what he told Abraham, I am your shield. That's what he told Joshua. Joshua said, I will be with you, and I will not fail you or forsake you. The same covenant promise in verse 10. I'm gonna say it, read it again. For I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, then Jesus adds, for I have many people in this city.

Well, there are two key points to be made here. God did have people in that city, and one meaning may be applied to the man named Galio, and Galio was an interesting person. He was a magistrate there, so I'm gonna read there. First chapter 18 of Acts, verse 12, it says, but while Galio was proconsul of Acacia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat, saying, this man persuades men to worship God contrary to the law. Okay, you have a new Bible, you can't turn your pages. But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Galio said to the Jews, if it were a matter of wrong or a vicious crime, oh Jews, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you. But if there are questions about words and names and your own law, look after it yourselves. I am unwilling to be a judge of these matters. And he drove them away from the judgment seat, and they took hold of Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, and began beating him in front of the judgment seat, but Galio was not concerned about any of these things. Interesting.

Nobody touched Paul. God promised him, no man will attack you, but Sosthenes got it. So it's interesting. If you turn to the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul's writing back, you know, the Crispus in one, whether it's the same synagogue or not, Crispus becomes a believer.

And then we're gonna read this. First verse of 1 Corinthians 1. Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother. Sosthenes apparently became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so God, in the second meaning, yeah, he had Galio, who was the magistrate.

I have many people in this city. God controlled the heart of the ruler. But also God had people who were coming to him, and that's why Paul was there those 18 months, because he was gonna build the church. But when you turn over to the next page or so in 1 Corinthians 14, 15, and 16, it says this. Paul says, I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one would say that you were baptized in my name. Now, I did baptize also the house of Stephanus.

Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any. Well, that's Crispus, the head of one synagogue, and then his Sosthenes. God was bringing his people to himself, just like he promised Paul in that covenantal reminder that God was with him. Our God is faithful. Our God is a covenant-keeping God. Even when our knees or stomachs are weak, he is faithful. So one of God's forever plans is that he's promised his presence to be with us. That's the Immanuel promise.

You know, Christ was with the patriarchs of old. He taught the disciples there in Judea, and he reassures us by the examples of the Apostle Paul that he's a covenant-keeping God. He is our Immanuel.

So we need to testify to that. We need to worship God because he is that way. And like Abraham, who was called out of Ur of the Chaldees many years ago, he obeyed God in faith, and God was with him.

He was his shield. Or like Paul when he went to the Roman Empire, into the Gentile world, God was with him, and he's with us. So Jesus is with those who belong to him, and he is with those who follow Christ daily. The comforter, the advocate, the intercessor is our Immanuel.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your blessings. We thank you for the fact that there's no way we can really know all that there is revealed about you, and there's more to be revealed in eternity future. You're so rich, you're so gracious, you're so patient. You're present with us, and we do not deserve it, but yet because of the blood of Christ, we can come into your presence. Oh Father, thank you for keeping your covenants and making your covenants. We give you thanks in Jesus' name, amen.