Speaker 1: If you are in Christ Jesus, if you have responded to that first chief sin of not believing in Jesus, and if you've come to know Jesus and have been filled with his spirit, that means you're not a sinner anymore. That means you are righteous.
Speaker 2: Hello, friends. Welcome to the Life Tabernacle Church podcast. It's an honor to be with you today. This podcast serves as our church's weekly sermon archive. Tune in each week to hear what God is speaking in our community.
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Speaker 1: Amen. So John sixteen five through 11. My friends, this is the word of the Lord. It says, but now I am going to him who sent me. None of you asked me, where are you going?
Rather you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly I tell you, it is good for you that I am going away. Unless I go away, the advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be wrong.
Or another translation said, he will convict the world about sin and righteousness and judgment. About sin because people do not believe in me. About righteousness because I am going to the father where you can see me no longer, and about judgment because the prince of this world now stands condemned. My friends, this is the word of the Lord. Let us pray over God's word this morning.
Lord, we thank you for your word. Your word is life. This word right here is not just words on a screen or words on a page. No. This is the bread of life.
This is the logos, the word And we pray it would nourish us this morning. That this word, what we gather around this morning would give us the strength we need to live out faithful lives to you this week. Lord, we love and we thank you. Holy Spirit come, in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Amen. I think one of the hardest things in the world is admitting when you're wrong. Because I know all of us here have always been right. Have you always been right, granny? Nope.
I think one of the hardest things I've ever done is just admitting to others that, hey, I had it wrong. You were right. That's really hard to say. And in this passage, this is partly what Jesus is addressing. That there is a certain group of things that the world believes about sin, righteousness, and judgment.
And Jesus is coming to prove the world wrong and to correct us about it. So in this passage we just read, this is what's going on. In this moment, Jesus is just hours away from dying on the cross. Jesus is getting ready to go on the cross and he's in the upper room with his disciples. And when he's in this upper room having this last discussion after the last supper, what is he talking about?
One of the things he talks about is the holy spirit. Look at your neighbor and say the holy spirit. He's telling his disciples something shocking. He tells them as we discussed over the previous weeks, he says to them, it is better for you or it is expedient for you that I go. It is better that I leave earth and I go up to heaven.
And at this they're like, really Jesus? We would rather have you here, right? And it'd be great to have Jesus physically here with us this morning. Yet Jesus in his wisdom is saying, it is better for you that I go because if I don't, the advocate will not come. Another word for the advocate is the counselor.
Who is the advocate? Who is the counselor? Who is the spirit of truth? It is the holy spirit. And Jesus is having this discussion with them saying, hey, I have to go so that he will come.
Right? And and on that note, because if he goes, if Jesus goes to the fathers, we looked at last week, we looked at the ascension of Jesus Christ. And one of my favorite messages I preached on the topic of the ascension. And because Jesus ascends the heaven on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes. And the Holy Spirit now indwells every single believer.
If you have ever confessed that Jesus is Lord and you have believed in your heart that Jesus rose from the dead and you've confessed your sins, my friends, you have been filled with the holy spirit. The Holy Spirit now dwells and lives inside your body. Paul calls this the down payment on our inheritance. And so all of us have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, which when you think about the Holy Spirit and we throw around all these words, we're talking about the Father and we're talking about the Son and we're talking about the Holy Spirit, it can be a little confusing, right? Because we serve one God, say one God, three persons or three personalities.
We serve one God who manifests himself in father, son and holy spirit. We serve a triune God who's in perfect fellowship with one another. If that's hard for you to understand, it's hard for me to understand. It's really hard to explain it to my four year old or my five year old now when she asked, well, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, I'm like, it's all God. And she's like, what?
And I'm like, that's what I learned at Bible College too. All right. It's a hard concept to grasp yet it is true. We serve one God who exists in father, son, and spirit. And apparently though, according to Jesus, when we believe in Jesus, we receive the holy spirit.
We see it in John chapter 20 after the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus breathes on his disciples and says, receive the holy spirit. Then in acts chapter two, while they're in the upper room and they're praying and they're gathered together there, there was a mighty rushing wind that blew into that room. The holy spirit descends and baptizes all the believers with fire, with the holy spirit, and they began to speak in cloven tongues of fire. Again, in the chapter in in Ephesians one, Paul calls the holy spirit the down payment or the guarantee of what is to come. Then through all throughout John fourteen and sixteen, Jesus is speaking about the holy spirit.
But a question I just like to pose is what does the holy spirit do? Right? We know who he is but what does he do? And the truth is the holy spirit does many things. For example, the holy spirit gives gifts.
First Corinthians 12. Did you know this? If you didn't know, now you'll know. You all have spiritual gifts. Every single one of you.
When we come to know Jesus, we are filled with the holy spirit. The holy spirit gives us gifts to serve one another with. Some of us have the gifts or the spirit of wisdom where we get words of wisdom and we're able to share them with others, right? Some of us have words of knowledge, some of us are able to, to give messages in tongues, interpretation of tongues, some of us can work in miracles, some of us can work in healing. The truth is all of us have spiritual gifts whether we know it or not and here later in the year, we're gonna go through a sermon series just on spiritual gifts because I hope I want us to unlock all that is in us that God has placed in us, right?
That we're not just trying to figure out this Christian life on our own power that the holy spirit's literally empowered us with certain gifts and that's one of the things that the holy spirit does. He gives us gifts. He also gives us, he also empowers us to be witnesses. Look at your neighbor and say, witness. Next chapter one eight, we read last week.
He says, you'll be empowered from on high to be witnesses, to be witnesses. What does that mean? Is to to declare to others to be a witness to what who Jesus is and what he's done in the scriptures and what he's done in your own life. That when we share the gospel that we're not sharing it in our own strength but he's empowering us to share the hope of glory with others. He's empowering us to do that because it's a hard thing to sometimes bring up Jesus in a conversation.
Am I right? It's why we don't do it. It's why we don't do it that much because it's awkward. And what if they think we're weird and they don't wanna talk to us anymore, right? Because there's a lot on the line but the bible says he's empowered us to be witnesses, right?
Another thing that he does is produce fruit in us. Who likes fruit? Man, I love a good orange. A good orange is good. And you know what else is good?
The fruit of the spirit. And over a period of time, the Holy Spirit produces in us what? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. These are called the fruits of the spirit. And these things, if we continue to abide in the vine, if our roots continue to grow deep, we'll continue to grow fruit on our branches.
And people see this fruit in our lives. I'd look at dream and I know she's a person who loves really well. That fruit is grown on her tree and is visible for all to see. She loves well and that's not just because of her own effort, that's the holy spirit working through her as she's yielded to God and we're all supposed to be like fruit trees. Some of us can be orange trees, okay?
Banana trees which bananas are trees. Has anybody have ever had a real banana? This is a just let me just stop for a minute, okay? I just wanna let you know just pause. The bananas in the store that you buy, they're not real bananas.
Okay? What you need to do is you need to fly to Brazil. Okay? Go to the Amazon Rainforest. Have one of the locals climb up a you know a 100 foot tree and grab you some fresh bananas off the tree.
They those were the best bananas I've ever had in my life. No wonder monkeys love bananas. They were so good. They were like half the size and twice as sweet. It was amazing.
Okay, I'm stopping. But the idea is that we all are like trees and we're growing fruit. That's one of the other things that the spirit does for us. Then one of the other things that the one of the many things the holy spirit does is he restrains lawlessness. We see this in second Thessalonians because of the presence of the holy spirit.
That's really the only thing holding holding this whole world together. And when the holy spirit is gone and Jesus comes, all things are gonna break loose. He restrains lawlessness. All this is true. But in John chapter 16, Jesus highlights three specific things that the Holy Spirit does in the world.
Okay? And I'm telling you, if you get this this morning, if you will listen to the word of the Lord, don't listen to me, listen to God's word spoken to you, it will literally change how you view yourself and how you view God. And the reason I say that now is I remember sitting in class with one of my classmates named Desiree Rao. Desiree Rao, it's Keaton's sister-in-law. And we were going through this passage and she began to break down in tears because she finally got the revelation of who she was in Christ.
It was one of the most powerful moments in my Christian life because she finally accepted what the word said about her. And my friends, I want to invite you to do it this morning. Sound good? Alright. Three things.
It says that the holy spirit would convict the world about three things. Look at your neighbor and say, convict. Convict. Another way the NIV translate this is prove the world wrong. What does the word convict mean?
When we hear the word convict, we think of things like courtrooms, right? Or guilt or shame or or when I asked my daughter, Simi, hey, did you have any suckers today that mom and dad didn't give you? No. Then I find the rappers. You are convicted.
You are guilty, right? We have found you out. We think of that but that's not necessarily what this word means in this passage. The word convict means more to convince or to bring to light or to expose the truth. The word conviction or to prove the world wrong is to convince, to bring to light, or to expose the truth.
The holy spirit's not trying to shame you. The holy spirit's not trying trying to bring guilt upon you, not trying to bring condemnation on you. That's why Roman says, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus our lord. So, the holy spirit here is not just convicting us, not a courtroom but it's more like he's trying to convince us of what the truth really is and what he's gonna do, he's gonna convince us of three different things. The first thing that the scripture say that Jesus is going to convict us of or convince us of is of sin.
Look at your neighbor and say sin. John sixteen eight says, when he comes, he will prove the world wrong to to be in the wrong about sin. About sin. So it says the holy spirit convicts the world of sin. And then he goes on to say, John goes on to say, he says, convict the world of sin because about sin because people do not believe in me.
The greatest sin in the world is not murder, is not adultery, is not stealing. The greatest sin in the world is not believing in Jesus, the son of God. That is the chief sin of the world. It's the greatest sin. Before we knew Christ, we were all guilty of this.
And whether we knew it or not, this was the chief sin. Some of us were addicted to certain things before we came to know Christ. Some of us have had some past that we wouldn't like to even share in public. But the ultimate sin, whatever those little sins underneath that sin, the ultimate sin of all though is rejecting God. You ever met an atheist or agnostic?
You ever met someone who just hates the idea and just proclaimed that God's not real? Keaton and I were a few months ago, we went to get some bagels. We went on a hike and we went to get some bagels and we ran into this guy. We were talking about God and theology and how good he is and this guy came out of nowhere and he began to just scoff. He began to just proclaim there is no God like what you're believing is a bunch of garbage.
It's not even logical. He just was I mean, he was just scoffing. It was you could feel that there's just odd presence. Just mocking the idea of god and that man's chief sin just like all of ours before Christ is just rejecting that there is a god and his son is Jesus Christ. That is the ultimate sin of what Jesus is trying to sell.
That's what he says about sin because people do not believe in me. And what Jesus is trying to tell us is, is when the holy spirit comes and he begins to convict the hearts of unbelievers. He begins to convince people who do not know god, who hate god, when the holy spirit begins to work on their hearts. He begins to convince them that their chief sin is that they don't believe in Jesus. Right?
I love I I I don't wanna butcher the story because it's fresh but you know you've been watching probably the the great NASA ship that just went up and went around the moon, right? Artemis two, right? It's been an incredible story and seeing all these astronauts share their face been really incredible. But there's this one particular astronaut. He said he came back and he was so overwhelmed by what he experienced.
When he got back, he asked for a chaplain. He said, I need to speak to a chaplain. He said when that chaplain walked into the room and this guy is not a believer mind you, he said. He said, when that chaplain walked in the room and he saw that cross on the chaplain's neck, he began to weep. He began to break down and he realized the chief sin he had been committing is not believing who died on that cross.
And he's convicted and no one told him that either. The holy spirit was working on his heart even in outer space convincing him you don't know Jesus and it's time for you to come home. Right? That's the chief sin to lead us to and the goal is the holy spirit is trying to lead us to life. He's leading us to Jesus and once you hear the gospel you're responsible for your response And that way you feel, do you remember that feeling when that first when you first were coming to know Jesus is just stirring in your heart.
And you're like, your heart's beating out of your chest. You know, I can't explain this but you're like, I gotta come to know Jesus. I'm a sinner in need of saving. My friends, unless the holy spirit convinces people they're not gonna know their sinners. You can beat people over the head with the scriptures.
You can tell them about it. You can post about it but if the holy spirit doesn't convict people in their hearts that they're sinners in need of saving nothing will ever change but when he does, when the holy spirit really convinces someone in their heart, I need to get right with God, everything changes in the person's life. They can have convicted of sin because they do not believe in Jesus. And again, we don't convict people. The holy spirit does.
Now, what are we? We're witnesses. Look at your neighbor and say, witness. And we can share the word. We can be witnesses.
We can tell other people about Jesus but we can't reach into their heart and do the work. That's the job of the holy spirit. You take your hands off that person in your life. We all have family members and friends who need to come to know Jesus. We can't do anything in our own power but what we can do is we can pray and we can be witnesses and watch God work.
He will convict them of sin. That's the first step. He's gonna convict the world of sin. The second thing that the Holy Spirit does and this is right here. If you don't get anything else today lock in right here.
The second thing that the holy spirit convinces us of is righteousness. Now look at your neighbor and say righteousness. Righteousness. Jesus says that the spirit's going to convict us of righteousness because he goes to the father. It's what exactly what it says.
It says about righteousness because I am going to the father. After the resurrection, after Jesus appears to over 500 different people over a forty day period and he spends time with the disciples talking about the kingdom of God, we looked at last week what does Jesus do? While he's on the Mount Of Olives, he begins to ascend into the heavens to take his rightful place as the son of God who has conquered sin, death, hell, the grave. And he has sat down at the right hand of the father interceding for us today. Jesus is on the throne in heaven.
And that's what Jesus is beginning to connect. He says, he the holy spirit's going to convict us of righteousness because he goes to the father. What is Jesus trying to tell us? Let me read you this quote from one of the commentaries I found. It says, the spirit shows people and no one else can do this that righteousness is not the acquiring of merit that they think it is.
Righteousness before God depends not on their own efforts but on Christ's atoning work for them. Listen, one of the most important things that you'll hear in your life. If you are in Christ Jesus, if you have responded to that first chief sin of not believing in Jesus and if you've come to know Jesus and have been filled with his spirit, that means you're not a sinner anymore. That means you are righteous. You're righteous.
You are like Jesus in some way now. And so many of us, we come to know Jesus but we really don't believe we've actually come to know Jesus. You say, I go to church, I've been saved but we so many of us live in the dark with the sin and guilt from the past. We carry things with us. My friends, as I've shared many times before, in my past, there's a lot of things that I felt guilty and shameful over.
I was addicted to certain things. Wanted to harm myself in certain ways. Right? And I felt shame over that. I felt I felt guilt over that.
I felt condemnation over that and that's not from the spirit. Sin and shame I mean shame and guilt and condemnation comes from the enemy but conviction of righteousness comes from the spirit. So listen closely to me. If you come to know Jesus, you are a new creation. You are brand new.
You are not the old you anymore. I don't care what you've done in your past. You are set free. You He declares you as righteous. He sees you as holy.
Stop seeing yourself as as borrowed goods. You are holy and righteous and blameless in his sight. Your blood doesn't cover you, his blood covers you and his blood speaks a better word over you. So please today, do not go to bed tonight and do not wake up in the morning whether you're gonna go to heaven or not. If you know Jesus, your sins are forgiven and you belong to him and you're gonna be with him forever.
Leave it at the door. Stop bringing up past stuff, he doesn't. The bible says, he cast the sin as far as the East is from the West and last time I checked that's a long way. Okay. There's metaphor there that it's gone.
Let it go. Let those things go that people have done to you. Let it go. You're not borrowed goods. You are holy.
You are blameless. You are righteous. Believe the word of God over you. Because of the blood of Jesus, you are now clean, you're holy, you are righteous. Regardless of your past, you have been cleansed.
I love what first John one nine says. It says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. The holy spirit wants to convince you today my friends that you are his, that you belong to him, you are a son or you are a daughter and you belong to him. Not on your own work, not on your own merit but on what Christ has done for you and because Christ has gone to the father for you. You are now righteous.
You have to live in fear no longer. You are righteous. You are holy. And this what this first John just says, if we do sin because I know I know this, I've sinned after I've come to know Jesus, right? I go to the father, I confess my sin, it's covered, it's clean.
He sees me as clean. I wanna try to make this look a little bit more sense because we hear the word conviction and we kinda get all in a tizzy about it, okay? So look, if I come over here to Kenny. Hi, Kenny. And I slap Kenny in the face, that hurt.
I'd slap you pretty hard if I'm gonna do it. Alright. If I slap you in the face, pow. What am I gonna feel? I'm gonna probably feel conviction that I shouldn't have done that and it's not conviction immediately, right?
You already know that you did wrong and that conviction is not guilt, it's not shame, it's not condemnation, it's not from God, it's the Holy Spirit convicting us and convincing us, hey, you used to slap people before you came to know Jesus, now you're a new creation. You don't do that anymore. Stop it. Don't slap him, right? And that goes for any sin that we commit in our lives.
The holy spirit's convincing you or convicting you. He's trying to bring to light. You are a new creation. We don't do that anymore. That's why if you do sin after coming to know Jesus and you feel that the Holy Spirit just reminding you, hey, you belong to Jesus.
We don't do that anymore. We act different in this house. We act different in this family. We act different in this kingdom. You're righteous.
God, Jesus is calling us up. The world brings us down. Jesus is calling us up. You are righteous. Look at your neighbor and say, you are righteous.
I mean it. You are righteous if you are in Christ Jesus. Please do not slap anybody today so you can just feel that conviction. That is not give you, you know, permission to do that, okay? Yes, I would have to deal with her, right?
But what what Jesus is trying to say is when the Holy Spirit comes, he's going to convict us about righteousness righteousness because I'm going to the father. And I know this might be hard and I know there might be some work to do but literally from this day on, you don't have to live with a guilty conscience of your past. It's covered. You belong to Jesus. You are righteous.
Amen? Amen. Now, the third thing that Jesus convicts us over is over judgment. Look at your neighbor and say judgment. Judgment.
Jesus says here in this passage, he says, when he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment. Verse 11, and about judgment because the prince of this world now stands condemned. Now many of us, I think we've gotten the two concepts that we've been convicted of our sin of unbelief in Jesus. Right? Holy Spirit's convicted you at some point you've come to know Jesus.
And whether in the past or today, now you're convicted of your righteousness that that your right standing with God's not based on what you've done, it's based on what Jesus has done and what Jesus has done speaks a better word over you. But the third thing that the holy spirit's going to convict the world over is judgment. Now let's just be honest. If you look at the world around you, it doesn't feel like Jesus has brought judgment on the evil one yet. Am I wrong?
Because you look around and there's darkness everywhere. No. Why do people still murder others? Why do people cheat on others? Why do people do anything they do?
You name the sin. You name the thing in the world. Why is that still happening if the ruler of this world has been judged? Because what the scripture says that when Jesus died on the cross, he disarmed the powers and authorities of their power. In other words, Jesus stomped the head of the enemy on the cross.
Yet, you look around the world and you're like, what's going on? Right? What Jesus is wanting us to know and what the holy spirit wants to convince us of, the holy spirit's reminding us that the enemy is real, darkness exists but it's defeated and it will not overcome in the end. Even though there is still suffering now, even there is still persecution now, even though the world seems to be out of control, John says that the light, the darkness has not overcome the light. My friends, I declare to you, I know how this story ends and Jesus wins.
Right? Jesus comes again and he wins and he makes all things right. He restores thing to the rightful place but so many of us live in fear of what's going on in the world. Right? And be transparent with you.
The thought of the nation we live in going sideways and another nation invading or just America implodes on itself with another civil war and my kids having to endure living in a nation that's not peaceful and nice is a scary thought. Right? My wife and I talk about this because people all throughout human history have lived in horrible times. Can you imagine living in Germany in the nineteen forties? Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine seeing people killed or living in Russia when Stalin was in there? And he could've he killed potentially 60,000,000 people in the gulag. You like you, you're like, I don't wanna live during this time. If Jesus has really won like, where's the victory? Where's the trophy?
Right? Here's the truth. Jesus has already won the victory but the parade starts in a little bit. Jesus is returning soon. So we don't have to live in fear.
The enemy doesn't win. Every time you watch a movie, it's about the same thing. A good guy and a bad guy and the bad guy, he always thinks he's gonna win then right at the end what? The good guy wins. It's every movie.
It's like we can't come up with a new concept because that's that that's the story behind the story of all stories. There's good and evil. There is God and the evil one. And it seems that the evil one's winning but he loses. He loses time and again.
Christ is the victor. God reigns above it all. And what the holy spirit wants to convince us of is that he's judged, he loses, live in peace. Don't worry about what's gonna happen. Suffering is gonna happen.
Persecution is gonna happen. Things might not be the way they ought to be but we have the full confidence that Christ will win in the end and he will bring justice when he returns. He convicts us of this judgment. Keaton, would you please come up? Jesus says in the book of John, he says, take heart.
Look at your neighbor and say, take heart. I have overcome the world. That freed me to live a little bit more relaxed. He says, I've overcome the world and the holy spirit is convincing me, exposing the truth that the enemy has been defeated and he'll be defeated again and defeated forever. Would you close your eyes with me this morning?
The Holy Spirit does many things. He's a wonderful person to get to know. He lives inside you. But these three things are crucial to living a fruitful life with Jesus. Today, the holy spirit's convincing us of sin so you would turn to Jesus.
He's convicting or convincing us of righteousness so you would know who you are in Christ and he's convincing us and convicting us of judgment so that we would not fear the enemy. And today, I wanna offer the invitation. If you feel conviction about unbelief in Jesus, I want you to respond to that today. If you don't know Jesus and you feel the holy spirit tugging at your heart, you don't when I say no Jesus, I'm not saying no about. I'm talking about having a relationship with Jesus.
Today might day be the day for you to respond. If you need to confess some sin in your life that you're not living up to the standard in which God sees you as his son or daughter, you might need to confess some sin. If you struggle to believe that you're actually righteous, I want him to convince you today. You might need prayer for that, but just believe God's word today. Or if you've been living in fear over things in your life and what's going on in the world, be reminded today that the enemy is defeated.
This is time not for pressure, no performance. This is just a moment to respond to God. With eyes still closed, I wanna tell you this story because it's the whole the whole topic of righteousness is really where my heart is at this morning mostly. The other two are important but right there. I remember praying with this pastor a few years ago and this person just felt like they were incapable.
Didn't feel worthy if you will to be doing what they do as a pastor because of their past. And I remember praying with them. I was praying. I was just praying in the spirit over them. I was praying.
I was praying. And then I felt like the holy spirit just dropped this word into my mind. He just said, I want you to just speak over them that you are worthy. And this person was just struggling and struggling. And as soon as I said, hey, the Lord says that you are worthy, this person began to break down in tears.
And every single wall, every single obstacle between them and God to serve, to love God and to do what God's called them to do was completely broken in that moment because they finally believe what God's word said about them that they are righteous. You were righteous this morning. And while Keaton plays and leads us in a last song, if you need prayer for any of these things this morning, I wanna invite you to come up. If you can't get out of your seat and you need prayer, raise your hand. And if you don't need prayer, would you just look to Jesus and be reminded of how beautiful he is this morning.
Take a moment to reflect and however the holy spirit's calling you to do so this morning. And I also wanna just last thing, I want to just convince you. I want to persuade you to do whatever the holy spirit's asking you to do this