The Empowerment Of The Holy Spirit (Part 2) - [John 16:8-11]

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Well, I don't know that there is a single doctrine in all of Scripture that has been stretched, mangled, mutilated, exaggerated, blown out of proportion, distorted, anything like the doctrine of the empowerment of the
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Holy Spirit, especially in the last, say, 110 or so years.
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In 1906, there was something, and naturally, almost everything bad, theologically, comes out of Los Angeles.
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Thank you. It's called the Azusa Street Revival. The Azusa Street Revival, and it was marked by experiences, healings, speaking in tongues, a great movement really started, and that was the beginning of the
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Pentecostal movement. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about that or any of these things, just kind of mention them to you.
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In the 70s, speaking in tongues visited some denominations, including, and this really is weird to me,
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Presbyterians and Catholics were involved in speaking in tongues. And then that brought about the
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Vineyard Denomination. But over and over again, the Holy Spirit has become, in today's
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Christian church, almost somehow equal to some sort of mystical experience.
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To be full of the Holy Spirit is to have some experience that transcends, that exceeds what we would hear just in the
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Word. Here's the experience of a former skeptic, I took this out of Charisma Magazine in 2010, former skeptic, author
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Jay Lee Grady, and he says, After I was convinced that speaking in tongues was a biblical experience,
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I went outside my church, sat on the volleyball court, and looked up at the night sky. I prayed a simple prayer,
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Lord, I'm yours, and I want all you have for me, fill me with your Spirit.
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I didn't hear the sound of a rushing wind, there were no claps of thunder, and no flames of Pentecostal fire.
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But the next day, when I was in my room praying, I could tell that a heavenly language was bubbling up inside me.
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I usually just pop a couple of tums when that happens. I opened my mouth, and the words spilled out.
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I had no clue what I was saying. It sounded like gibberish. Yet when
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I prayed in tongues, and here's the key, yet when I prayed in tongues, I felt close to God.
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And when I read about the phenomenon of praying in the Spirit in the New Testament, I learned it is a precious spiritual gift that edifies the believer.
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Now what does it mean to edify? I mean I've given, in counseling,
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I love to go to Ephesians 4 .29 and just kind of lecture and hector and pester people about this word edify, because if you only use edifying language in your speech, that means building up language, right?
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So when we're talking about edifying the believer, we're talking about building them up. Now it's odd, because he mentions being filled with the
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Spirit. In Ephesians 5, we read about, do not be drunk with wine, because that's dissipation, that's excess, that's abuse.
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But instead be filled with the Spirit of God. What does that mean? I'm not going to talk about that at length, but I'm just going to say this, if you go home and read
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Ephesians 4, Ephesians 5, Ephesians 6, you're not going to get this idea of an experience, you're going to get the idea of what?
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Being filled with the wisdom of God, of being filled with scripture, of having your life controlled by the
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Holy Spirit via the Word of God. You're not going to have this idea of, you know what,
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I just surrendered myself and I said, God just fill me, and I started speaking gibberish.
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What does Jesus say about the empowering work of the Holy Spirit? What does the
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Word of God say about it? Well, we're going to talk a little bit about it this morning, for the next 40 minutes or so.
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Open your Bibles to John chapter 16. So we continue looking at the first 11 verses of chapter 16, and let me read those to you.
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Our Lord says, I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues.
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Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.
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And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you.
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I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. But now
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I am going to him who sent me. And none of you asked me, where are you going?
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But because I've said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth.
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It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you.
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But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.
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Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the
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Father and you will see me no longer. Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
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Now there's very little time for Jesus to spend with his disciples before he is arrested.
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And he's spending these last few hours, these last few hours he's going to have with them to challenge them to be his human witnesses.
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And promising them the Holy Spirit to be the divine witness, to aid them.
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They will be his witnesses and so will the Spirit. And last week we looked at the difficulties the disciples would face.
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Because Christianity would not end with the death of Jesus as the Pharisees and the leaders of the
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Jewish establishment hoped. They hoped by putting Jesus to death that would be the end of it. The focus would then turn to them.
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In fact, they would even be tempted to walk away from the faith. They would face social pressure and physical danger.
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Finally, we saw how Jesus promised them that it was to their advantage to have him go away because the
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Holy Spirit would take his place. If Jesus did not leave, they would not have the fullness of the
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Holy Spirit, which they needed in order to faithfully testify of Christ.
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Now this morning I'm going to be a little bit polemical. What does that mean?
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It means I'm going to tell you a little something that we're against and then what we're for. And I'm going to base it the second half, especially in John 16.
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But the first part, I just want you to see what the Holy Spirit does not do.
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And I think it's important, especially in the spiritual atmosphere in which we live.
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In fact, you know, on Sunday evenings, we've had a few Spanish -speaking services. And it's interesting because our
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Spanish -speaking brothers and sisters come here and they say there is nothing like what
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Jose has been preaching in this area. Why is that? Because it's filled with these
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Pentecostal and charismatic churches that are filled with ecstatic experiences, but very little biblical teaching.
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So it's important that we know what the Holy Spirit does not do, how he does not empower the church, and then we'll see how he does empower the church.
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Okay, so what he does not do? He does not participate in failed prophecy.
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Now it seems like I shouldn't even have to say that, right? Why would God, you know, participate in some failed prophetic statement?
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But some these days are teaching, even renowned scholars, I won't name names,
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I want to, but are saying that, you know what, a prophet of God doesn't have to be 100 % accurate.
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He can be wrong once in a while. He doesn't have to get everything right.
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The prophet who misses it occasionally in his prophecies may be ignorant, immature, even presumptuous, or he may be ministering with too much zeal and too little wisdom and anointing.
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But this does not prove him to be a false prophet. It is certainly possible for a true prophet to be inaccurate.
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And that's a guy who runs a school of prophecy who says that. So if prophets can be wrong sometimes and still be prophets, then there's no such thing as a false prophet.
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Let me say that again. If you can be wrong sometimes, then why can't you be wrong more often than not?
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What is the standard for a true prophet and a false prophet? And if there's no such thing as a false prophet, that's pretty convenient, isn't it?
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So as we're examining that, just think about this question. Has God changed? Does he give words to his prophets that are sometimes false?
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Listen to Jeremiah 23 verses 31 to 32. Behold, I am against the prophets, declares the
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Lord, who use their tongues and declare, declares the
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Lord. In other words, thus saith the Lord in the old King James. Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams, declares the
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Lord. And who tell them and lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness when
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I did not send them or charge them. So if they do not profit this people, or so they do not profit this people at all, declares the
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Lord. In other words, I'm not having anything to do with these people who speak on their own accord, who speak their own dreams, who don't speak what
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I tell them to say. Well, maybe God changes his mind. Isaiah 46 verses 9 and 10.
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God says this, remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am
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God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand and I will accomplish all my purpose.
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God doesn't change his mind. He doesn't give his prophets false statements.
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Peter was in that upper room on that evening, the last supper.
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He was listening to Jesus and he wrote this in 2 Peter 2 verses 1 to 3.
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But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon them swift destruction.
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And many will follow their sensuality and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed.
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And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.
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Their motive is greed. Their methods are lying and exploiting the spiritually immature and naive.
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And their destiny is hell. These are not believers.
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These are wolves in sheep's clothing. They found a flock to fleece and they're going to do it.
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Think about this. What is, we've been studying, you know, long ago with Pastor Mike, the book of Hebrews and in Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 and 2.
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What does the writer of Hebrews say? He says, this is how God used to talk to you. But now he's given us his final word in his son.
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He's done. The book of scripture is complete. The canon of scripture is complete. There's nothing else to say.
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Jesus is God's final word. So the Holy Spirit does not participate in false prophecies.
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He also does not participate in fake healings. I'm not even going to go into any kind of depth about this.
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But if you notice a lot of the healings, quote unquote, that tend to take place in these meetings and on TV and whatnot are very difficult to verify.
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You know, it's someone in Omaha who's got, you know, an inflammation of whatever, you know, or it's, you know, they've got a sprained ankle or it's temporary.
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These are not healings like, well, like Jesus or the apostles did, where somebody with a demonstrable illness or injury was instantly healed.
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And the purpose of these, is it to glorify
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God or is it the furtherance of the show? I, you know how I feel about all these artists who run around and pack people in for the
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Friday night and Saturday night shows and, you know, sing 43 rounds of whatever song before they start the healing thing and make sure all the people with the wheelchair gets set in the back.
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And so they can't come up and get on stage. It's all about glorifying the name of Jesus.
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They themselves not glorifying the Lord. He also does not participate in deliverance ministries. And for those who may not be familiar with deliverance ministries,
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I mean, I thought it was so wild when I heard about it when I was in seminary. A deliverance ministry is when they actually have these meetings during the week and they cast demons, allegedly, cast demons out of believers, out of believers.
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Now, that's interesting. I wrote a paper about this because I just found it fascinating that anybody would think this was possible.
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1 Corinthians 3, 16 and 17 says this, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?
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If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him for God's temple is holy and you are that temple.
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Holy Spirit indwells you. And actually, you know, if we studied John a little bit more deeply today, which we're not going to do this part, we'd see that the father and the son also take up residence in you.
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And you mean to tell me that while you are indwelled by the triune God, a demon comes in too, like a sublet.
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I don't know what the...I can't even figure that out. Bump it on over.
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No, impossible. 2 Corinthians 6, 15 and 16.
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What accord has Christ with Belial, a demon? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?
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What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said,
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I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people.
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We don't see any instance of demons indwelling believers, not one.
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So he doesn't participate in that. He also does not spread confusion in congregational meetings via speaking in tongues, laughing, or making it appear that believers are drunk.
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That is just crazy. You know, one man claims to be the Holy Spirit bartender. What is the purpose of spiritual gifts?
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Gifts of the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12, 7 says this, to each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.
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For the common good, for the body of Christ, right? When you come into a church and people are rolling around on the floor, they're laughing, they're roaring like lions, they're speaking in tongues and gibberish, as that one man said.
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Do you think this is a place that the Holy Spirit is edifying people, where they are growing closer together?
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By the way, laughing or symptoms like drunkenness are never described as gifts of the
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Holy Spirit. You know, in Acts 2, these men are not drunk as you think, right?
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You think they're drunk, they're not. But that doesn't mean that drunkenness is a spiritual gift or the appearance of drunkenness.
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Furthermore, they would not be for the common good. What is the Holy Spirit? What is his goal? Well, he has two goals.
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We'll talk about one in a moment. But if you just think about it this way, Holy Spirit wants to edify.
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He wants to build up. After giving instruction on how gifts should be exercised,
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Paul wrote this in 1 Corinthians 14, verse 33, for God is not a God of confusion, but of peace, as in all the church of the saints.
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And that's not what we see when we look at a lot of these churches. We don't see that. And the problem is that many
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Christians are looking for, like this man in the beginning, they're looking for an experience and not for edification.
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The goal of the Christian life is spiritual growth and spiritual maturity. Colossians 128, it's in your program.
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Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
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So, those are just some of the things the Holy Spirit does not do. Now, let's look at what the Holy Spirit does, what he does.
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Firstly, I'm going to go back just a little bit in our book and back to 1526. You don't have to turn there in John 1526.
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He testifies about Jesus. I've already mentioned that. But when the helper comes, talking about the
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Holy Spirit, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the
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Father, he will do what? Create chaos in the church? No. He will bear witness about me.
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Think about the activities that other activities that people ascribe to the Holy Spirit. How do they fit in with the
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Holy Spirit's mission? Jesus says, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to you and he is going to testify about me.
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He points to Jesus, that's what he does. We'll see more of that next week. He longs to glorify
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Jesus. And while some underplay the role of the Holy Spirit, you know, some say, well, your church is dead.
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It doesn't have the Spirit. Well, yes, it does. Our church does have the Spirit. How do I know that? Because we proclaim the word of God each and every week, the
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Spirit -written word of God every single week. So some underplay the role of the
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Holy Spirit, others exaggerate it. Why? Because studying is hard work.
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Edification is hard work. Sanctification is hard work. Experiences are fun.
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It's fun to eat Twinkies. That's good. It's fun. It's not really much of a diet.
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Those things are ephemeral. They're temporary. So why don't we, you know, sing lots of songs about the
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Holy Spirit? Why don't we just constantly speak about the
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Holy Spirit? Because the focus of Scripture is what? Jesus Christ. It's written by the
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Holy Spirit, working through men, breathed out by the Holy Spirit, but it's not about...
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Scripture is not about him. It's about Jesus. Now, to our text proper, the
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Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning sin. Look at verse 8. And when he comes,
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Jesus says, I'm going to send him. When he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in me.
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Now, this is the only place in the Bible where the Holy Spirit is said to perform a work on the world.
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It's pretty amazing. It makes it kind of important. And what we see here, as one writer says, he says, we see that the
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Holy Spirit is not the domesticated auxiliary of the church. In other words, he's not just our faithful companion.
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He is the powerful advocate who goes before the church to bring the world under conviction.
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Apart from the Holy Spirit, no one comes to know the truth about sin, righteousness, or judgment.
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Now, just a word, this word, paraclete, from which we get helper or advocate or counselor, can also give you this idea of a prosecutor because it is the idea of somebody come alongside someone else.
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So, an advocate, a lawyer, and it can have that idea of a prosecutor.
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So, that's kind of the aspect we're looking at here this morning. What does it mean to convict?
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Jesus says he will convict the world, actually. Well, it means the Holy Spirit will uncover, expose, make plain the guilt of every single person.
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How? Well, through the gospel. What does the gospel do when you hear it?
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You know, for the same people who hear the gospel, they say, that's good, that's right, I'm thankful.
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For unbelievers, what do they say? I don't really care. But it either convicts or it hardens.
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It either encourages or it causes additional hatred for Christ.
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It always does its work. The Holy Spirit is always working through the proclamation of the gospel.
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In the heart of unbelievers, everyone knows that they are not perfect, even if they claim perfection.
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By the way, when you think about it, I mean, I know some people claim perfection, but when you think about it, could there be a more arrogant claim?
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And let me just develop that for a second. If you say that I have no sin, in other words, I am perfect, what are you ultimately saying?
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It means that you have stepped out of your humanity into some form of divinity and decided what the standard of perfection is.
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You're no longer a creature, you are divine. People who say that have decided that they know what the standard of God should be, and they are it.
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That's what I mean by arrogance. It's really the height of arrogance. So how does the
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Holy Spirit convict? Jesus isn't explicit here, but I think it's pretty obvious in a study of scripture how he does convict, it's through the word of God.
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Listen to 2 Timothy 2, familiar pastor, 2
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Timothy 4, sorry, verses 2 to 5, familiar to us, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season.
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Listen, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itchy ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.
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And will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober -minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
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Well, how does he fulfill his ministry? By preaching the word. People need to hear the truth of God's word.
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In fact, in Romans 10, when Paul's explaining basically how people get saved, what does he say?
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How shall they hear without a preacher? They're asking somebody to go and tell them the truth. Now, what does it mean that he convicts concerning sin?
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Well, there's one sin that governs all sins. I've talked about it before. It is the sin of unbelief.
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In fact, I've said this on several occasions, but it's really important, so I'll say it again. Why is it?
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I mean, we understand that Jesus didn't sin because he had no sin nature.
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I read one man this week who said he didn't sin because he was divine. Well, that really wouldn't be much of a test.
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He was fully human as well. He didn't sin because he had no sin nature, and he had no inclination to sin, and he had the self -control to not sin.
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But the heart of all sin is unbelief. Even in your own lives as believers, why do you sin?
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It's because you don't believe God enough. It's because you put what you know to be true out of your mind for a moment, and you focus on what is not true.
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You cling to it, and ultimately, even as James describes it, you focus on it, and you eventually produce sin.
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But as the Holy Spirit who afflicts the unbeliever's conscience and compels him or her to see themselves as sinners, we know that the deeds of the world are evil.
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Jesus exposed that. In John 3, 19 and 20, Jesus said this, and this is the judgment.
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The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than light. I'm sorry, this is
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John, rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed.
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In John 7, 7, Jesus said, the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.
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And as Jesus leaves, as he goes to the Father, the Holy Spirit will continue convicting men.
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And sometimes it's going to be in ways or in situations that the disciples, as they're sitting there that night,
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I mean, I always want to picture them around a campfire. They're not around a campfire. I don't know why I want them to be around a campfire. It just would be kind of cool, but they're not.
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They're in the upper room. But as they sit around the campfire in the upper room, if they could see the future, they would be blown away.
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If they could see the salvation of Saul on the road to Damascus, if they could see the salvation of the
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Ethiopian eunuch, if they could see the salvation of the Roman centurion, it would just be beyond their minds to even their imaginations to even imagine these things, let alone
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Pentecost and all these other things. Some revel in the fact that they are sinners.
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Some delight in that. I mean, you know, I've heard people say, you know, well, I want to go to hell because that's where all the good parties are.
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I'm going to keep sinning. I'm condemned. I might as well enjoy it. That's that hardening work.
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But what happens when someone becomes convicted of their sin in such a way that they know they are condemned before a holy
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God? When someone understands the dire straits that they're in, they have a sense of fear.
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They know God's holy, they're sinful. They know that there's nothing they can do to make themselves right. There's an urgency to their situation.
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So he convicts concerning sin. He also, the Holy Spirit, convicts the world concerning righteousness.
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Look at verse 10, concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no longer. Isn't it true that people recognize their need for righteousness, that they're convicted of this need for righteousness?
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If you give the good person test to somebody, if you say, are you a good person? What are they going to say? Most of the time they'll say yes.
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And you say, well, how does that prove that they know they need righteousness? Well, think about it. They would probably say no, if they were being honest, but they have a need to prove that they are righteous.
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They have a built -in need to show their goodness. So they exaggerate, they lie, they compare themselves to other unbelievers, right?
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They put themselves on a scale and they say, you know what? I'm pretty good. I'm not bad at all. But when we're talking about righteousness,
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Jesus' death and exaltation fulfills the conditions for his righteousness to be imputed, to be accounted to us, to believers.
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Meanwhile, the world's standard of righteousness, its best efforts are what? You know, if you could take all the best efforts of everybody,
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I don't care who it is, you know, line them all up, Gandhi or Mother Teresa or all these people that are lauded, that are praised by the world.
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All their efforts, their best efforts on their best day are what
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Isaiah called filthy rags. All the rule -keeping of the Pharisees, the dietary restrictions of Seventh -day
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Adventists, the mandatory self -denial of the Jehovah Witnesses.
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I'm not even including going door to door. The temple work of Mormons, the
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Lent sacrifices of some Christians, the scheduled prayers of Muslims.
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If you could put them all together, they are worthless. Worthless. The strictest life that we could possibly construct for ourselves, living in some kind of ashram, just separated from everything, you know, just some kind of study somewhere, some,
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I don't know, abbey or whatever they are. One of those monk places where they do monk things with no outside interference.
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No matter what, our minds are such that we would sin. There's no way we could be righteous.
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Listen to Colossians 3, verses 16 and 23, because we are law people.
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We want law. And Paul writes this. He says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a
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Sabbath. These are all the things that all these other religions focus on. These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
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Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism, only eat fish on Fridays, and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the head, that is to say
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Christ, from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with a growth that is from God.
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If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were alive to the world, do you submit to regulations?
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Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used.
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It's not what goes into your mouth, it's what comes out of it that condemns you, Jesus said. This is according to human precepts and teachings.
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These have an appearance of wisdom and promoting self -made religion and asceticism.
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Notice that word self -made religion and asceticism. In other words, I'm going to flog myself,
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I'm going to lower, I'm gonna punish myself to please
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God. Self -made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
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Now I intentionally left off the first couple of verses, really the key, back to verse 13 of Colossians 2.
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And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.
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This he nailed, or this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.
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Listen, here's the message Paul would be giving in Colossians 2. Jesus did it all.
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You are in Christ. All these other things that people want to add on, forget about it.
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Those are man -made rules that are of no benefit to you. You have all you need in Christ Jesus.
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The gospel is not a series of rules and regulations. Righteousness is not something we can obtain by our efforts.
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It is accounted to us. It's granted to us. It's imputed to us by faith, faith that itself is a gift from God, a gift that we would have no interest in receiving if it were not for the convicting work of the
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Holy Spirit. He must convict you of your need for righteousness.
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He also convicts the world concerning judgment, concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
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The ruler of this world is Satan. He was a liar from the beginning, is the father of lies.
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The unsaved are his children, the children of wrath. And that's what makes divine adoption so shocking, right?
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Because God takes you not from the best families, as it were, takes you from the family of Satan and adopts you as his own.
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There is great irony, I think, in the cross, what seems to be a great triumph if we just think about it, what's about to happen.
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This is exactly what Satan wants to happen. He wants Jesus put to death. All of his,
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I'll just call him minions for the kids, his acolytes, his followers, the
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Pharisees, the Jewish rulers, they all want to put Jesus to death. And it seems to be a great moment of triumph for him.
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But as Luther said, for lo, his doom is sure. Barnes wrote this, he said, the death of Christ was a judgment or a condemnation of Satan.
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In this struggle, Jesus gained the victory and subdued the great enemy of man. This proves that God will execute judgment or justice on all his foes.
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If he vanquished his great enemy who had so long triumphed in this world, he will subdue all others in due time.
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All sinners in like manner may expect to be condemned. Of this great truth,
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Jesus says the Holy Spirit will convince men. God showed himself to be just in subduing his great enemy.
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He will show that he was resolved to vanquish his foes and that all his enemies in like manner must be subdued.
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Satan was defeated at the cross. He was not victorious.
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We know that if we look at Revelation 20, his ultimate judgment,
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Revelation 20 verses nine and 10, after the millennium, we read this from the pen of John.
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He says, and they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city.
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But fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And listen, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever and ever.
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Sin. The Holy Spirit's gonna convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgments.
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Now, when I started just ruminating on that sin and righteousness and judgments, here's my conclusion.
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That's a nice gospel outline, right? Here was the message of Jesus.
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You guys are gonna go out and be my witnesses. You are gonna testify of me. And guess what? The Holy Spirit's gonna do that too.
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He's gonna be with you. What do you proclaim?
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You can look at almost any sermon you wanna talk about in the book of Acts or anywhere else that there is a sermon.
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And you're gonna hear this, sin, righteousness, judgment.
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If you just say to yourself, okay, I need to, when I'm witnessing to somebody, what do I need to tell them about?
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Sin. You're a sinner. You have sin in your life.
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You've missed the mark. You failed to do what God commands. You've either actively sinned against God or you have passively sinned against God by failing to do what you ought to do or you've done what you ought not to do.
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So you are a sinner. Righteousness. Your lack of righteousness, the fact that you fall short of God's perfection means what?
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It means you're on your way to hell and there's no way for you to get to heaven on your own. Your best works, as I said earlier, are like filthy rags.
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You need some righteousness from somewhere. Well, where can you get it? It's only available in Jesus Christ.
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It's only available in Jesus Christ. The God -man, fully God, fully man, left the
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Father's side, came to earth, lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death and was raised on the third day.
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And it's because our sins, the sins of all whoever will believe, are placed on Him that we can have
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His righteousness placed on us when we stand before the throne on judgment day because all will.
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It's appointed to men once to die and then to judgment, not to a second chance. When we stand before the
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Lord on that day, if we're not, as the Scottish Presbyterians like to say, wrapped in the robes of Christ, if we don't have
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His perfection to protect us, we will face that judgment and that judgment will be eternal hell.
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The gospel is for everyone. The gospel needs to go out indiscriminately. We need to trust the
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Holy Spirit. Well, I don't know what to say. Well, yes, you do.
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Sin, righteousness, judgment, trust the Holy Spirit. This is what
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He does. You just tell the truth and the Holy Spirit will do the convicting. You don't have to do a sales pitch.
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He does the work. Let me just conclude by saying this.
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Sometimes we hear about revival. We need revival. We need the Holy Spirit to bring revival.
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And I listened to that and I'm going, no, we need the Holy Spirit to bring about resuscitation because we have so many people in so many churches that are dead.
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They're absolutely dead. They need to be brought back from the grave. How is
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He going to do that? How's the Holy Spirit gonna do that? He's gonna do that by people proclaiming sin, righteousness, and judgment, not by ecstatic experiences, not by looking for signs and wonders.
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What does the Holy Spirit do? He convicts of sin and righteousness and judgment. And He does so by doing what?
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By pointing to Jesus who has ascended and it sits at the
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Father's right hand. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the convicting work of the
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Holy Spirit, that He moves in the lives of people, sometimes that we would not even expect, sometimes the opponents of the gospel.
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I think even about the tools that you have granted us now, even in social media to proclaim the truth.
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Father, how often do we think, well, you know what? I just don't think I can do it. But we share baby pictures and we share cute stories and we share all kinds of things.
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We can share the truth about Jesus Christ. Lord, make us shameless about proclaiming
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Christ and Him crucified, telling people about sin and righteousness and judgment and trusting in your spirit to convict and to save.