The Ministry of the Holy Spirit | Sermon 1/14/2024

Apologia Utah

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All right, if you would please turn with me and your Bibles to the

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Gospel according to John, chapter 16. Chapter 16, we're going to be in verses 5 through 15 today.

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It's amazing to think that we started the Gospel of John in, I think, August of 2022.

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We were in John all in 2023, and now we've only got until April, a couple more months in the

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Gospel of John. It's been amazing. The title of the sermon today, church, is

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The Ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Ministry of the Holy Spirit.

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So starting in verse 5 of the Gospel according to John, chapter 16, hear now the words of the living and true

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God. But now I am going to him who sent me. And none of you asks me, where are you going?

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But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.

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For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go away, I will send him to you.

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And he, when he comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

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Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. And concerning righteousness, because I go to the

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Father and you no longer see me. And concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.

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I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

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For he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak. And he will disclose to you what is to come.

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He will glorify me, for he will take of mine and will disclose it to you.

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All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore I said that he takes of mine and will disclose it to you.

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Thus ends the reading of God's holy and magnificent word. Let's pray once more as a church.

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God, we thank you for your word today. We thank you, Lord, that we can know it. We can learn it.

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We can receive it. That it takes thoughts captive into obedience to Christ.

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That this word transforms and doesn't only inform. And so God, that's what we ask as your people today,

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Lord. That this word would do a work in all of us. That this word would be illuminated to us now by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Please be with us. Please keep our focus on you today, oh

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God. And let not the enemy snatch away any of our focuses now.

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Guard us with angels, oh God. I pray this in Christ's name, amen.

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In the beginning, mankind enjoyed the privilege of being in God's presence.

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Before sin, the Lord would walk among Adam and Eve, right?

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But then a separation occurred as mankind was cursed. And God could no longer dwell with such unholiness.

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Because of his own very holy character. There were select individuals that were set apart by God.

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Who had faith in him. And they would sometimes receive the privilege of having

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God in their presence. Albeit for a short time. Men like Noah. Men like Abraham.

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Men like Moses. But when the Ark of the Covenant was given to the

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Israelites. It was promised that God's presence would be restored among them. As Andrew expounded last week.

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But a veil and a temple and sacrifices and worthiness. Would make it so that that intimacy of God's presence was masked.

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It still wasn't like the beginning. It wasn't like when

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God would walk with them in the cool of the day in the garden. Now when the

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Messiah came. Totally and truly God and totally and truly man. God would finally dwell among his people again.

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I've said this many times. But in Christ was the greatest manifestation of God on earth.

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At least that the world had ever seen since the garden. And when he died.

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He split the temple veil in two. Giving complete and intimate access to the

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Holy of Holies. Access to God. To his people once again. However there is of course a not yet and now reality to that.

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Right? Like Christ. Believers have a mission to complete as well.

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One that Jesus commissioned us to complete by his power. But as we have seen. He had to go back to heaven.

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How can the disciples of Christ accomplish what only the power of God could?

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Well the presence of God did not leave when Christ did.

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Let me say that again. The presence of God did not leave when Christ left. The paraclete as we saw.

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The helper. The counselor. The Holy Spirit was sent to be with us and in us.

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That's what Jesus said. With us and in us. God is among us even now.

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God is with us right here right now. And the work of Christ has not fallen by the wayside.

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Christ's work didn't finish necessarily when he ascended into heaven.

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See? The fact is so many legacies begin and end with the wrong generation.

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There is a man who builds an empire. Maybe he builds a business or he builds a big city and he builds this empire.

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And within a few generations of passing it down his children lose it.

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They don't want to work the way that he worked. And just like his memory, his legacy in these places are forgotten.

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It diminishes. But Christ has started something right here that has only ever grown.

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I'm telling you. Christ has started something that has only ever grown from that moment.

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It has never diminished. It's never faded. It's never gone into oblivion. And it won't pass away in the hands of his children.

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Because he is still with us. He is still with us. And the Spirit of Truth, who is with us, expanded what was with 12 men in one nation, 12 men in one nation, to now countless billions of men, women, and children in every nation.

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And today we will see the scope of the Holy Spirit's ministry upon the earth. But before we get into it, let's recap.

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So I was here two weeks ago. Two weeks ago we were in John chapter 15.

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And we saw that Jesus was warning the disciples of impending persecution.

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He said, you will be hated. You will be hated. Just as he was wrongfully treated, so will we be.

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If the world hates our Master, then they will hate us, his servants.

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That's part of the Christian life. God will use those things to sanctify us and mold us, and it will all be worth it in the end.

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I talked about it as I prayed today. The present sufferings of this time are not worth comparing to the future glories of heaven.

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They just don't even compare. In verse 4, Jesus made a transitionary statement.

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He said he didn't say all of this before because he was with them. Now go to verse 5.

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But now I am going to him who sent me. Jesus says, but now

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I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me where are you going.

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Okay? So Jesus is going to him who sent him.

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And in many ways, it's always been about the one who sent Jesus. In John 4, verse 34,

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Jesus said, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish all his work.

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That's his food. That's what he lives off of. In John 5, he said, Those who hear his word,

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Jesus' word, and believe him who sent Jesus, has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death and into life.

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You've got to believe in the one who sent Jesus. You've got to believe his words.

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John 5, verse 37, the one who sent Jesus has testified about Jesus. In John 6, we found out that the will of him who sent

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Jesus is that they lose none that the Father has given him. The one's drawn by the sender of Christ.

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In John 8, verse 16, Jesus said, His judgment is true because it's not his alone, but also the one who sent him.

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In 8, verse 26, Jesus said, He only ever told them what the one who sent him has already said.

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You see, the sender and the sent have the same word.

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In John 11, verse 42, we find believing Christ is believing the one who sent him.

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If you believe in Christ, it's believing in the one who sent him, and conversely, not believing in Jesus is not believing in the one who sent him.

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Exactly 33 times, Jesus has referred to the one who sent him.

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33 times in the Gospel of John. Our Lord does the sender's will.

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They speak with one voice. Belief in one is belief in the other.

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The sent testified about the sender, and the sender testified about the sent one.

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In the sovereign calling and election of the saints, the one who sent Jesus and Jesus himself secure the saints.

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And so Jesus, in the Gospel of John, has identified this one multiple times.

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He said, the one who sent me is the Father. It's the Father.

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You already knew it. This is the Father. And it's clear that Jesus finds his purpose and mission and even nature with the one who sent him.

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The Father and the Son are intimately one. And he even said it, right? He said, I and the

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Father are one. I and the Father are one. And they're not simply one in mission. We saw that.

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Of course they're one in mission. He was speaking about something more ontological, more highly theological there.

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They are one. Seeing the Son is seeing the Father. Seeing Jesus is seeing God. This is the triune operation of our great

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God, especially as we see the Holy Spirit being spoken of today. You have the one who sent him.

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You have Jesus Christ. And now the Holy Spirit today. The Father has sent.

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The Son has done his work. And he's sent to return home.

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And then the Spirit will be sent by Jesus to do what all three persons of the

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Blessed Trinity have purpose for him to do. Sent and destined to dwell here.

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You see, the work of Christ continues on with the

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Holy Spirit today. But for the Spirit to come and be with them and dwell with them and do these things,

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Jesus must go back to the Father who sent him. Now, this statement, it says,

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And none of you asks where I am going. And some of you who have been wise on picking this up, you've probably noticed when

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Jesus says, And none of you have asked me where are you going. That's a difficult statement because Peter asked him where he's going in chapter 13.

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Where are you going? And then in John chapter 14, Thomas, the apostle, asked

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Jesus where he is going. Therefore, some have tried to claim right here that this is an apparent contradiction in the text.

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Look, you Christians, your word is wrong. It has error. Now, more easily, it might be,

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I looked at the Greek and I immediately saw that right now this word ask, this verb ask is in the present active tense, which is opposed to the past tense or the aorist form.

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In other words, Jesus isn't saying, And none of you asked me before, but none of you asks me as in now.

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But I don't even think that's it either. I don't think that's what Jesus is trying to say. I don't think that makes the best sense of what's going on here.

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Because remember, the issue is Jesus is saying, None of you have asked me where I'm going.

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But then there are two verses before this in the previous chapters where it seems as if the apostles asked him where he's going.

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So I think what tends to happen is we can be so mechanical in our translation of the text, we can be so mechanical with syntax and lexical work and translation that we can look at conversations of Jesus and his disciples too mechanical.

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You know, you can dissect something down to nothing, and it kind of loses the meaning as a whole of what it is.

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So I think that what Carson says about this is really important.

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Listen to this. What's happening here? He states in the flow of the argument, both in 1336 and 14 verse 5, it is not clear that either

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Peter or Thomas was really asking the question formally represented by their words.

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They didn't really mean what they were saying. And then Carson goes on to say that a little boy could be disappointed that his father suddenly got called away for an emergency meeting, and the dad comes to the boy whom they expected to go fishing together.

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And the dad comes and says, I'm sorry, son, I've got to go away. I've been called for an emergency.

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And the boy goes, ah, dad, where are you going?

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Ah, dad, where are you going? Right? But the boy actually cares nothing to learn about his destination.

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The dad doesn't go, well, you know what? I'm going to get on the I -15. I'm going to get off on this exit. And I'm going to go to work. And you know, well, you've never been in my office.

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But let me describe what my office is. And that's what the child is trying to say when he's disappointed that his dad had to cancel on him when they were supposed to go fishing.

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He says, ah, dad, where are you going? And it's more as a protest.

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It's more of his trying to display his displeasure in this. In fact, the unspoken question in that kind of question, where are you going, is more, why are you leaving me?

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Right? That's how our kids are. If they were to say, where are you going? It's, why are you leaving me?

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And so the disciples have been asking those sorts of questions. They have not really asked thoughtful questions about really where he's going and what that means for them.

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They've been too self -absorbed in their own loss. They've been so sorrowful that Jesus is leaving that it's not actually their questions are technically where he's going.

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It's been, why are you leaving? Okay? They've not really sought to find out where he's going as he returns to their father.

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Their questions, therefore, church, are an emotional reaction to discovering that the one they love is leaving them so soon.

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Because it truly saddens them. They're disappointed. And since the end of chapter 12, when

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Jesus ceased his public ministry, and chapter 13 showed us the beginning of this private instruction with his disciples, he has this whole time, what, been seeking to console and encourage them.

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These men are down. We've been seeing that for weeks. They are down.

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Jesus is leaving. He's going to return to the father. And he's trying to lift them up.

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But the more he tells them, in some ways the more they despair. Look at verse 6.

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But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Because I've said these things, sorrow has filled your heart.

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And you know what? Jesus knew they would. But he still said it. Jesus knew they'd be filled with sorrow, but he still said what he had to say.

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They need to look to what God can do. They need to stop looking at what they can do.

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Jesus has told them God has a mission for them. He has a mission for us, for you and I.

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And that God, the Holy Spirit, will be the one to help us do that. In reality, their desire should be for what

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God desires. What God has planned. So actually, and this might be controversial to you,

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I'm not saying it's wrong for them to feel sad that Jesus is leaving.

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But if they take that to a sinful place, if they take that to a place where they desperately do not want

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Jesus to do what he has to do, then it's become sinful. Don't go.

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Don't do that. Because that's what's been the case so many times in the

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Gospel of John. Right? When he fed them the bread, and it says that they were looking to him, and they said they wanted to make him a king right then and there.

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We talked about how that would be wrong. He wasn't meant to come and overthrow

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Rome. He came and he meant to overthrow the greatest enemy.

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Not Rome, but sin and death. And so to want him to stay and not carry out his mission is going too far.

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But they don't realize it. And neither would you and I, right? We'd be following Jesus.

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If you were one of the disciples, you'd be following him. You'd love Jesus. You don't want him to go.

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I get it. Really, Jesus leaving and the

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Spirit coming is going to magnify and expand Christ's presence rather than diminish it.

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But we have to be honest. What God has to tell us in his word is not always easy to receive, right?

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It is not always easy to receive. Don't get me wrong. The word is a lamp unto our feet.

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His word is life. His word is a demonstration of his very character.

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His word is love. There's nothing like it in all the seen and unseen realms.

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The word of God is incredible. But the word is often called a sword, right?

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The word is often called a sword. And some have keenly said that the word is also like a surgical knife, surgical blade.

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It's meant to heal. It's meant to operate, to produce wellness. But it still cuts, right?

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That's what a surgical blade does. It's a sword. And I think in some capacity, because they have yet to see

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Jesus after his resurrection, and they have yet to be given the Holy Spirit, their sorrow is warranted.

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Of course they feel this way. The dying and rising of Jesus Christ are what make it possible for us to be able to face what the world has to throw at us, to be able to face tomorrow.

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And so think about what's happened so far, right? In these few chapters, he said, one of you will betray me.

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One of you will deny me three times. The rest of you will scatter away.

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And I will die, he says. I will die. I'm going to leave you.

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You will be hated. Some of you will be killed by people who think that they are doing so as an offering to God.

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Those are hard things to accept. I'm leaving. I'm going to die. You might get killed too eventually.

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You're going to be hated for my name. And there's all these moments that will make them feel this great sense of sorrow.

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It makes sense, no matter what he said. These are hard things to accept. This is honestly not the best goodbye party for Jesus, right?

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They don't see what wonderful things are going to come as a result of what

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Jesus will do. All that they've ever thought about the Messiah, you guys, all that they've ever known about who the

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Christ is and will be, and all that they've been challenged by their local leadership and their synagogue leaders and the

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Pharisees and scribes has been that the Messiah will come and rid them of Rome, right?

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Be this warrior king. And so everything that they've ever known about the Messiah has been flipped upside down.

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He's going to die, and then He's going to leave. This is supposed to be the

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Messiah. He's going to die, and He's going to leave, but they'll get it. And multiple times

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He said, when the Holy Spirit comes, you're going to remember that I've told you these things.

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You're going to remember, okay? How can things get better, they think.

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How can all of this be good? How can this situation be redeemed?

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We'll miss you too much, Jesus. We need You here. But He knows.

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He knows what they need. He knows what we need. When you and I say the same thing, where are you in this,

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God? Why are you leaving me, God? When you and I feel the same things as they feel,

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He's got a purpose. You can't see it now, but it's coming. Look what

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He says in verse 7. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the

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Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. He says this is the truth.

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He's not lying. This is to your advantage, He tells them.

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This word advantage in the Greek is sumpharo. And sumpharo literally means to combine something together, to bring something together, which is to say that all these things will be combined together in such a way that brings gain.

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Brings gain. This is profitable is what this word means. His leaving increases their benefit.

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What they believe is loss is actually gain. And often what you and I perceive as negative in our lives, which actually produces legitimate sorrow in you, you are intensely sorrowful, will result in things working to our benefit, which then brings great joy.

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It happens all the time. In fact, He will tell them in verse 20, your grief will be turned into joy.

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And so it's not that the Spirit and Jesus can't both be ministering upon the earth.

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At the same time, among believers, this is purely eschatological. This is in the path of redemption,

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I should say, that Jesus leave and the Holy Spirit come. This is to fulfill prophecy that the

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Spirit would be poured out upon the earth and expand the reach of Christ in the world.

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You know, we often think to ourselves, I don't know if you've ever thought this, I've thought this before.

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Maybe you've thought this. If only I was there when

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Jesus walked the earth. You ever thought that? If only I was there when

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Jesus walked the earth, how amazing would that be? If I was among Jesus when

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He walked the earth. But what's incredible is Jesus insists right here, in this text, it is better to be alive now after the

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Holy Spirit has arrived. It's better now, He says. It's to your advantage that I go away.

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It's to your advantage that the Holy Spirit come. That is better. Only so many believed in Christ when

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He walked the earth. Only so many believed in Him when He walked the earth. But the Spirit of God took the

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Gospel of Christ and spread it over the entire globe. That's what we've seen.

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Not hundreds in the first century, but billions are impacted by the

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Gospel over the last 2 ,000 years. You see, the loaf of bread is better than the leaven.

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And the tree is better than the small mustard seed.

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It is better. It is better. And Jesus meant for it to grow infinitely bigger than what it was prior to germination.

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The mustard seed should be huge as it grows into a tree. The question is for us in 2024 is how big is the tree currently and how much bigger will it get, right?

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How much bigger will God make His kingdom? But back to the text,

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He says if He doesn't go away, the paraclete, the Helper, will not come to them, to us.

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But just as He was sent by the Father, the Son will send the Spirit. We already learned in chapter 14 that the

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Helper will cause the apostles what? To remember all that He has spoken to them and to teach them all things.

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That's what He said in John 14 to the apostles. When the Helper comes, He will remind you of all that I've said and He will teach you all things.

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And I told you that that was the basis of the New Testament. They didn't get it now, but they got it later by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. And these words in this book in the

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New Testament is that promise fulfilled. I will remind you by the

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Spirit of all that I have spoken to you and He will teach you all things.

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That's Matthew to Revelation. Right? Those are the words of God. We got what

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He wanted us to have. Okay? And so, the

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Lord also said that He would be with us. Right? That He would abide in us, the Holy Spirit. The world, however, does not see

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Him or know Him. He said that. The Holy Spirit is not given to those of the world. I once had someone tell me that everyone is born with the

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Holy Spirit. Everyone is born with the Holy Spirit. He's given to them regardless of belief or not.

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And I have to tell you that that is error. That is completely wrong. The Holy Spirit has not been given to everyone regardless of belief or not.

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The Bible states otherwise. As Jesus speaks to those whom He loves, those who believe in Him, the promise is for the

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Holy Spirit to be with them as in the way that Jesus was with them.

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Okay? So what am I saying? What I'm saying is that there are those who have rejected

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Christ. They don't love Him. They don't follow Him. They don't believe in Him.

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And so do we really believe that those people would also then on the other side love or believe in the

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Holy Spirit? No, they would reject the Spirit of God. They would reject

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Him just the way they have rejected Christ as well. So even though the

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Spirit's role has mostly to do with being a helper and a comforter and a teacher to the true disciples of Christ, and we'll see that continued positive ministry in verses 12 -15, right now in verses 8 -11, these speak to an additional function of the

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Holy Spirit. One that's not often talked about. One that the world does not like, though it is vitally necessary and I would argue extremely gracious.

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Look at verses 8 -11. This is a function of the Holy Spirit. And He, when

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He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in Me, and concerning righteousness because I go to the

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Father and you no longer see Me, and concerning judgment because the ruler of the world has been judged.

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That's a difficult statement, right? I don't know if you read that yourself and you're like, what exactly is

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He saying? Convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.

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The Holy Spirit will do this. The Holy Spirit has done this. And He's going to do it to the world.

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To the world. His arrival will convict the world.

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And this word convict can mean convict, expose, reprove, correct.

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And we don't get the image from Jesus that this will make those who remain of the world change for the better.

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It will, however, make people who are of the world come out of the world.

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This conviction will take people like you and I out of the world.

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But it will also do something to those who remain in the world. The Spirit will expose the world for what it is.

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And the world, often in Scripture, kosmos, is often synonymous with a system in rebellion to God.

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That's often how Paul uses it. That's how John has used it. The world has been used to describe a system in rebellion to God.

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The Spirit's arrival will reprove the world. Or another word is scold.

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It'll scold it. He will convict. That is, declare the world to be found with a crime.

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A declaration of guilt will be given to the world by the Spirit. One commentator says, the paraclete will comfort...

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I'm sorry, the paraclete will confront the world with its failure and prove its guilt.

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Whether or not the world recognizes it, the mission of the paraclete in the cosmic trial is to convict the world of its guilt before God.

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So, in the process of the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world, the

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Spirit must convict those of the world of its sin. And this is a grace from God.

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This is absolutely a gracious act as those in the world would be revealed their sinful condition by the

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Spirit and these individuals will then get to see the Son perform the work to remove that condition.

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Okay? The world, in other words, has a disease that it does not know it has.

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The world has a disease it does not know it possesses.

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And therefore, it does not realize that belief in Jesus is the antidote.

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Belief in Jesus is the antidote to that condition of sin.

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And so, the world then puts off its future condemnation.

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It puts it off. It hides it from itself. It gladly blinds itself to its sinful condition.

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And it's going to take the Spirit of God to show people they have sin.

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That they have unbelief towards Christ. Honestly, I grew up in the Christian church and I will tell you,

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I never knew I had sin. None. I thought

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I was such a righteous young man that God would see me worthy to be saved.

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Such arrogance, right? So blind to my sin. And it wasn't until 12 years ago when

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He saved me that I finally saw that I had sin. I saw that I had sinned against a holy

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God. And that's the missing ingredient. That's what people don't realize.

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And you say, well, people know they're rotten. Yeah, in some sense, people know they're rotten. But people don't realize that their sin carries the weight of a punishment of God that would last for eternity.

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And the gracious act of God is that He has sent His Spirit to show me, to show you, your sin.

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So that you would see that Christ is the solution to that sin. That's what we need the

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Spirit to do. You see, conviction of sin is part of God's love towards those who are called to Christ.

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But just as Jesus' coming splits the world in two, so does the coming of the Spirit in His conviction.

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For those who remain in unbelief, this conviction turns more into a declaration of guilt.

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One that they don't care about. Okay, I'm in sin. No problem.

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It says they did not believe in Him. Right? Convicting the world of sin because they did not believe in Me.

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That's what He says here. And so the greatest of all sins is unbelief. Unbelief.

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Why? Because unbelief looks at all the works that God Almighty has done in providence and in creation and in the work of Jesus Christ and in my own life, and it still rejects

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Him. It looks at all those things and it spits on them. That's what unbelief does.

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Unbelief will stare God down in the Person and work of Jesus Christ and say,

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I don't want it. I don't want it. It will discard Him.

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Unbelief is willful blindness. It's insanity. It suppresses the truth and unrighteousness as Paul says in Romans 1.

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And so we need the Spirit to show us our sin if we are to ever see

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Christ as the solution for it. That's the reality. Next, the

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Holy Spirit exposes the world due to righteousness. Due to righteousness.

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What does this mean? And I'd like to say that righteousness here is not the

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God -approved kind. It's not the good kind of righteousness. But the kind of righteousness that Jesus points out of the

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Pharisees. He convicts the world of righteousness. Foe righteousness.

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You remember Jesus often calling not the righteous to repentance, but sinners.

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He came for the sick. Not the well. He came for sinners.

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Not the righteous. And that's the way He's using it here. Okay?

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Remember, Jesus has said that there was a difference. We saw this in John.

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There's a difference between those who understood they had sin and those who don't. If you could see, you'd see that you have sin and not righteousness.

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That's what He said. He told them that. He told the Jewish leaders if you could actually see.

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This was when He healed the man born blind. He said if you could see, you'd see that you have sin.

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But you think you are without sin. That's what He told these men. And so this is kind of like the way that Isaiah 64 calls our righteousnesses as filthy menstrual rags.

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Only good enough to be thrown away, to be tossed out. That's the righteousness being talked about here.

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This is not a good righteousness. This is a faux righteousness displayed by those in a sinful world.

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See, it doesn't matter that Jews are offering sacrifices to God. It doesn't matter if they're offering sacrifices of God, doing temple works of righteousness.

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When in chapter 2, Jesus had to cleanse the temple because they were selling sacrifices and making a profit and blaspheming

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God. It doesn't matter if they were sacrificing animals to God.

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It was nullified by their sin. Their works of righteousness. In chapter 3, we saw that the

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Pharisees' teaching was not of heaven, but of the earth. And it wasn't truly righteous even though they taught from the

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Torah. Their teaching wasn't righteous. In chapter 4, we saw that though the

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Jews were practicing rites and rituals of worship to Yahweh, the one true God, that they were performing righteousness, it was far from it.

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Jesus said that God wouldn't accept it. He will only accept worship given to Him in spirit and in truth.

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That's what He told them. In chapter 5, the

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Jews were more concerned with observing the additional man -made righteous regulations of the

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Sabbath than seeing that a man who was ill for what? We saw there was a man in chapter 5 ill for 38 years.

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38 years, and he would lay there and he could not get to the pools of water on time and be carried so that he would be healed in the waters.

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38 years this man was ill. And instead of focusing on the miracle of God that this man was healed, they looked at Jesus and said, you disobeyed the

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Sabbath. You disobeyed the Sabbath. They maintained their righteousness.

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And maintaining their righteousness would have kept this man sick and ill to the day he died.

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That's not righteousness. That's not righteousness. They labeled what

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Christ did as evil. And they sought to kill Him from that moment forward if you remember.

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They said, you are making yourself out to be equal with God. And of course

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He is, right? So with those examples in mind, righteousness here serves more to show how they rejected

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God rather than did deeds showing fidelity to God. The Spirit will convict of righteousness because I go to the

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Father and you no longer see Me. Jesus' coming made sin known.

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That's what's happening here. Let's think back about it, okay? The Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin.

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That makes sense. But now, the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning faux righteousness, and He says, because I go to the

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Father and you no longer see Me. And so what He's trying to say is in chapter 15, actually, we went over this two weeks ago.

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Jesus' coming and speaking to the people has given them guilt. That's what

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He said. And now they have no excuse for their sin. That's chapter 15 verse 22.

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If I had not come and spoken, then you would have no guilt.

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You would have no sin. But because I've come and given you the truth and you rejected it, you are with guilt.

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You are with sin. That's what He said to them. And so, Jesus has called the hypocrites out.

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He's revealed the true status of their deeds. They hated Him for the exposure, right? They hated

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Him for being shown for who they really are. And that's often what those who love doing evil do.

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When you expose them, they turn on you, man. They turn on you. Even people in your life, people who say they love you, people who don't know

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Jesus Christ most often, even some people who profess to know Christ, when their deeds are exposed, they turn.

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Boy, do they turn. And that's what happened here to Jesus Christ. And what

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He's trying to say in this is that although He's leaving and His coming has exposed the world of its sin, that's not going to stop.

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Just because Jesus is going doesn't mean the world will now get to do all the things in the shadows that it wants to do.

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Ah, yes, the Messiah is gone. Now it's time to continue to do our faux righteousness, our evils.

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God isn't watching. He says that's not the case. The Holy Spirit will come and expose is the

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Greek word or convict the world of its false righteousness. Jesus started it, and it's not stopping.

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The Holy Spirit will continue to do it. And that's honestly why the world hates so much of you and I.

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Because that's still happening today. The Holy Spirit's convicting the world of this faux righteousness.

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And then when you and I, I'm not saying we're perfect, but when you and I actually perform true deeds of righteousness, that Ephesians 2 says

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God prepared beforehand that we would walk in them, when you and I actually do righteous works, the world's going to look at that and be convicted.

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That's why you ever done something for, I don't know, a neighbor or a family member or even a stranger, you did some righteous deed, and it wasn't muddied by your own sin.

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You did a righteous deed that God prepared beforehand, and you did it. And you ever got someone after that and say, look at you.

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You're so self -righteous. You're so self -righteous. They gaslight you. Look at you.

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You're doing that to obtain some status in your church. And it's like, yeah, some people do do that.

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But we could do what's right here today, and the world won't applause you.

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The world won't applaud you. You could do everything right from this moment forward.

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In fact, the Scripture, the data's in the world will hate you more. So actually, the more you sin and the more you're like the world, the world will love you more.

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And the less you're like the world and the more you're like Christ, the promise is the world will hate you more.

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So finally, the Spirit, it says, will convict the world in regard to its judgment.

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What does that mean? Well, it comes back to two places in John.

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Jesus said it in John 7, verse 24, stop judging by mere appearances or outward appearance, but make righteous judgments.

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John 8, verse 15, He said they make judgments according to the flesh.

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Okay? Which means that they don't make judgments according to the Spirit, and that has persisted.

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And what this shows is the world's spiritual blindness. They think they are faithful to God, but they didn't believe in the

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Messiah. They think they are righteous, but they are in sin and need a

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Savior, and their judgment is completely man -centered and in fact, demonic.

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So you get how the word is being used here. This word isn't being used in a sense of final judgment or something like that.

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This is like their judgment, their decision making, their will, their volition, their acts.

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He says the Holy Spirit is going to convict the world of its false judgments.

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It's made judgments on Christians. The world has made judgments on Christ. The world has made judgments and declarations about who

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God is, and the Holy Spirit will convict them of that. And they'll either come out of the world and no longer believe that, or when the

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Holy Spirit convicts them, a declaration of guilt will be stamped down. And that's what's happening in this text right here.

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And he says that the Spirit will convict the world regarding its false judgment because the ruler of this world has already been judged.

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So the first thing to consider is if the ruler of this world has already been defeated, how much more the inhabitants of the world he possessed will be as well.

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If their leader falls, if the devil falls, so shall they who follow him.

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And the other thing to consider is that God has already declared the devil judged and condemned.

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And that was sealed at the cross, you guys. And that will be finalized at the resurrection of the dead on the last day.

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You see, the world doesn't have long. This world doesn't have very long.

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They too will go the way of the adversary according to the Bible should they not repent from their false judgment, false righteousness, and sin.

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And that's what you and I deserved. I'm not talking about some special placement that you and I have that we inherently had in ourselves.

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This is unbelievable! That's the Gospel. You and I deserve all these things to be convicted of sin, convicted of false righteousness, convicted of false judgment.

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And you and I should go off with the ruler of this world and be done away with.

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You and I should get that. That's what's unbelievable is He actually took us out of this.

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He took you and I out. He gave us His grace. He gave us forgiveness. Okay? And so belief in Christ is the solution for the world.

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And here we see the Spirit must reveal that to the inhabitants of the world, including you and I. In other words, the

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Holy Spirit must convict the world to take many out of the world, but some will double down for their love of the world.

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We see that playing out today. Okay? Okay? So Jesus will now transition into verses 12 -15.

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These are our final verses for the evening. He described the work of the

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Spirit towards the world, and now towards those who were taken out of this world and became

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His church. He's changing focus. Okay? But the reality is, with all these promises of the

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Spirit, their sorrow is still present. They're still sorrowful. But very soon, all of this will make sense.

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They'll remember Him saying that. And for now, Jesus continues in verse 12. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

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You cannot bear them now. This means, in the

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Greek, that it can't be held up anymore. It'd be too much to carry for them.

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It'll have to wait. They need the Helper to be able to bear more of these truths.

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And this doesn't mean that we've missed out on something that Jesus was going to tell them. He's told them all that they are supposed to know, and all that we ought to know we have received.

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But the Apostles have reached their human, finite limits. Okay? He has said everything

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He needs to say. And, uh... I find that amazing.

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Honestly. And I think about my own walk. There are things in your life, as Christians, that you're not ready to face yet.

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But you will. By the help of God. You know, um...

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There is this general repentance, metanoia is the word, turning away from sin and death, and turning to Christ, that I believe the

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Holy Spirit gifts us with. I feel like, I believe the Bible says that that gift, that repentance is a gift.

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But with that said, there are many things when Christ first saves us that we might repent from.

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Singular sins. Christ maybe saved you, maybe someone was a drug addict and they stopped doing these drugs, and they stopped making alcohol and this, and sex their idol, and stuff like that.

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And they have this immediate repentance in some ways. But I was told by one of my seminary professors, he said, if God revealed to you all the ways that you sin on a daily, minute by minute basis, if He showed you all that, you would be undone.

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You would be undone. You would say more than Isaiah, woe is me. It would be as if you would be cast down.

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And so God is so gracious in the Holy Spirit, in our lives, where often

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God comes to you, and He says, they have enough to bear right now, and I will reveal this to them when they're ready.

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And really, it's when it's in His timing. It's when the Holy Spirit will go right there and dissect and remove that away from you.

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Praise God for that. Praise God that He will remove from you and I the things that ought to be removed and in His timing.

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Okay? So that's what we see here. And so, post -resurrection and of course

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Pentecost, they will receive all that they need from Christ. And we too have this now in the

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Word and in His Spirit. Verse 13. Verse 13. But when He, the

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Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak of His own initiative, but whatever

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He hears, He will speak and He will disclose to you what is to come.

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So we come upon another function of the Holy Spirit. He will guide you into all the truth.

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This word guide means to lead or direct with the implication of making certain that people reach the appropriate destination that the

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Spirit has made. That is to say this. Look, what if I don't know where to go and I just grab you by the hand and be like,

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I'll lead you and we'll go. And I could lead someone but I don't know where to go.

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But I'm kind of still leading them like I'm leading the way to nowhere because I don't know where to go. But the difference is with the

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Holy Spirit, the difference is, is that He leads us and He takes us to where He wants us to go and be.

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You get what I'm saying? That's a complete difference. I can lead you but not know where we're going.

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He will lead you to exactly where you need to go. He is our guide and He will guide us into all truth.

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He will take us to a place we otherwise would not find if He were not leading.

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He will take us to a place that we otherwise would not find if He were not leading.

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He is our guide, He is our leader. He will take the followers of Christ into all truth.

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And that's important because we saw in John 14 that Jesus is the way, the what?

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The truth and the life. To truly pursue truth is to pursue

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Jesus. And to seek Jesus is to come into the truth.

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The spirit of truth does this. That means then that any spirit that leads one away from the truth, any spirit that leads anyone away from God's word is not the spirit of truth.

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It is a demonic entity. It is demonic. A spirit that leads you away from the truth is demonic.

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Spirit of falsehood. You see, there are many as John says in his epistles, there are many antichrists in the world.

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And if that's the case, if there are antichrists then I would argue that there are antispirits out there.

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Does that make sense? There are antispirits of truth. But here's the promise.

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Here's the reality. It says here that God will keep you from that. If you have the holy spirit of truth, you will be guided into all truth.

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You know what? I believed a few weird things right when I was saved. You get online and you start, oh, this person's a

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Christian. They must be an authority on this. Oh boy. My church has drums. It says here that drums are demonic because they use the snare drum to bang them when they offered children onto the arms of Molech in Jeremiah.

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Oh, drums are wicked. Drums are evil. And I started to second guess whether my good

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Levine Baptist church was a place where I could worship because they had drums. You see how we can get into weird things sometimes?

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But look, God brought me from that. For a moment, just a quick moment,

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I'm not even going to say a full week, but it was enough for me to make three orders. I bought three

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KJV 1611 Bibles because I was like, oh my gosh, the same guy is telling me my

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Bible's corrupted and the only right translation is the King James 1611, not anything newer, 1611 because somehow

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King James was more authorized by the Holy Spirit than Christians today. Whoa!

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And that can become legalistic. And, oh, you're not saved if you don't have the

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KJV. Look, I love the KJV. I own several. I read them. I love that translation.

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But when you take that and you say, if you don't use the KJV, you're not saved.

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You've just made it work. You've just changed the Gospel. Right? And so,

01:00:00

I'm not talking about those sorts of errors. God always matures us. He brings us through that.

01:00:06

But there are, of course, demonic entities, spirits of falsehood that are corrupting the world even at this moment.

01:00:16

Even at this moment. I walk out this door and I pray before my sermon and down that way

01:00:23

I see the South Jordan Temple and I see a demonic spirit over that place.

01:00:29

I see it in this state and in this city and in this world, right?

01:00:35

Giving these falsehoods. So, God will keep us from that when we are

01:00:44

His. And so, coming into the truth doesn't simply mean that they will stand before the truth.

01:00:50

Coming to the truth doesn't mean you come to the truth and you just, oh, look, oh, the truth. Oh, there's the truth.

01:00:56

No, the text here says that the Holy Spirit will lead you to the truth and lead you in.

01:01:04

The word is into it. He'll bring you into the truth. You won't just come and stand before the truth and point at it.

01:01:11

You'll be in the truth. Into it. That's what He says here. Okay?

01:01:18

And He'll keep us in it. He will keep us. And so, speaking about wisdom and truth from God, Paul says this in 1

01:01:28

Corinthians 2 .10 -14. And we're getting there.

01:01:33

We're almost wrapping up. Paul says, For to us, God revealed truth through the

01:01:39

Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

01:01:45

For who among men knows the thoughts of man except the Spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the

01:01:55

Spirit. Now, we have received not the Spirit of the world, not the demonic spirit, but the

01:02:03

Spirit from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the

01:02:17

Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural man, here it is, but a natural man does not accept the things of the

01:02:27

Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot understand the things of the

01:02:35

Spirit because they are spiritually appraised, he says. And so,

01:02:40

Jesus confirms all this right here. Truth and wisdom are given through the

01:02:46

Spirit to you and I. Natural man, the man of the world, the one without the indwelling

01:02:55

Holy Spirit cannot receive these things unless changed and indwelt by that Spirit.

01:03:04

And at the heart of it, since truth and wisdom are from God, the Spirit is showing us the mind of God.

01:03:13

Jesus says, the Spirit will not speak of Himself alone, but whatever He hears,

01:03:18

He will speak, He will announce to you what is to come. Okay? So although the

01:03:25

Father and the Son and the Spirit are co -equal and co -eternal, the

01:03:30

Son had, and I told you this many times, a functional subordination in His earthly ministry to the

01:03:37

Father. And here we see the same idea with the Spirit to the

01:03:42

Son. The Son, I'm sorry, the Spirit is not on an isolated mission.

01:03:48

The Spirit hasn't gone rogue. That's what Jesus says here. The Spirit will speak what

01:03:56

He hears from Me. Jesus says. What the Father tells the

01:04:01

Son, the Son has been telling the disciples, but a day is coming when the Father tells the

01:04:07

Son, the Son tells the Spirit, and the Spirit tells us, tells the disciples.

01:04:14

And regarding He will disclose to you what is to come, what is that?

01:04:21

Is that futuristic? There's a sense in which that is. One commentator states, the guidance into what is coming need not be understood necessarily in a futuristic vision, for the future will not be unveiled in a knowledge imparted before it happens, but it will be illuminated again and again by the

01:04:41

Word at work in the community. So in other words, what does it mean here when

01:04:46

Jesus says, the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth, and He will inform you of what is coming.

01:04:55

What does that mean? I don't think it means that every single believer is indiscriminately given knowledge of future events before they happen.

01:05:07

Not even the apostles got that. Sometimes, miraculously, but that wasn't something that was given to them.

01:05:15

Contextually, I think this has a lot to do with the tribulation of AD 70 that Jesus warned them about in Luke chapter 21,

01:05:26

Matthew chapter 24. There's something coming, right? There's something coming,

01:05:31

He says, and Jesus warns them, you will not taste death before these things happen.

01:05:37

They're going to come upon this generation, Jesus tells them. And so I think that it has a lot to do with what's happening here.

01:05:44

The Holy Spirit is going to help them know what's coming. They're going to be able to read the times.

01:05:51

Not necessarily be given all these abilities of like, whoa, here's the future, here's the future.

01:05:57

Okay? And honestly, I think that this also speaks to us in that you and I, as those who are indwelled by the

01:06:10

Holy Spirit, are given often discernment. You and I can see what's happening in the world.

01:06:18

We can understand what's coming. And the most sure thing that's coming is Christ is going to return.

01:06:25

We know what's coming. Christ is going to return. It says He's going to judge the living and the dead.

01:06:31

It says that He's going to speak. A trumpet will sound and He will speak and all the dead will rise and those who are still alive upon the earth will hear the powerful word of Jesus.

01:06:41

It will be so powerful it makes dead people come out of the grave. It makes those who were burned and those who were lost at sea, it makes all of them reconstitute and come together.

01:06:53

And His word is so powerful those who are still alive upon the earth will float up into the air.

01:06:58

It's so powerful. That's that final resurrection moment and so we know that that's coming.

01:07:07

He has made us know what is coming. Now, as we wrap up with the text,

01:07:16

I want you to see at last the unity of the three persons of the

01:07:23

Trinity. And I think that is paramount to the Gospel message.

01:07:29

The Trinity is important to the Gospel message. We see that in our final two verses here, okay?

01:07:36

Verse 14, the Spirit will glorify Me, Jesus says, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.

01:07:45

Verse 15, all things that the Father has are Mine, therefore

01:07:50

I said that the Holy Spirit takes of Mine and will disclose it to you, okay?

01:07:58

So He will glorify Me, Jesus says. This is doxezo. This is glory and praise.

01:08:05

Who alone in the Bible receives glory and praise? God. God Almighty.

01:08:12

But here we see the Spirit glorifies the Son. And just as the glory of the

01:08:19

Father and the Son was exchanged between them, so will the glory between the

01:08:25

Son and the Spirit. This is significant. Because anyone who claims a work of the

01:08:30

Spirit but it rather blasphemes the Son than glorifies Him, it is not the

01:08:37

Spirit of Truth in action. This is, once again, this is a false spirit. If someone says,

01:08:44

I have the Spirit of Truth, and that Spirit and that person doesn't glorify

01:08:50

Jesus Christ, and they actually say that He's something He is not, or they just say

01:08:56

He's an elevated man, or a creature, or an angel, or something like that, or He was just a great man, or a great prophet, or a wonderful teacher, and then these people don't have the

01:09:09

Spirit because the Spirit will glorify the Son. The Spirit will give the

01:09:15

Son something that only God gets because Jesus is God. Right? And so finally, verse 15,

01:09:30

This has the Trinity written all over it. Okay? It's overflowing out of this verse.

01:09:37

All things that the Father has. All things that the

01:09:43

Father has. That's everything. And He's indiscriminate with this. These are the attributes of the

01:09:50

Father. The truth, the wisdom, the words of the Father. All of those things are

01:09:56

Christ's. And they're not simply given to Him. It's inherent.

01:10:03

They're in Christ already. The Divine Son shares all things that the

01:10:08

Father has. Because He is God. Full possession. Full possession.

01:10:15

Excuse me. And the Spirit will have of Christ. Which is what?

01:10:22

All that Christ has is all that the Father has. So the Spirit has all that Christ has, and all that Christ has, has all that the

01:10:32

Father has. That means the Spirit has all that the Father has. You see that circle? You see that Trinity?

01:10:39

They all share this together. They are one. And whatever

01:10:46

God wants the Apostles to have, they will have it by the Spirit of Truth. And whatever God wants us to have, we will also have by the

01:10:57

Spirit of Truth. And so the paraclete, the helper, truly is the one who ministers in the world today for the

01:11:08

Trinitarian God and for His people. Convicting the world we see here and guiding the church.

01:11:16

And He continues to do that even to this day. And that's really what this is all about.

01:11:22

Okay? Christ has not yet returned.

01:11:29

He's not yet returned. We're waiting. And so the mission of Christ in the church has continued on.

01:11:38

This is part of it. You're in it. And the Holy Spirit has empowered us to do these things.

01:11:47

And by the Holy Spirit, who does these roles among the world and the church, we continue in the mission of Christ.

01:11:56

Excuse me. And so He is still working today. God is among us today.

01:12:05

God was with us. God is with us.

01:12:11

God will be with us. You see? God is our past. God is our present.

01:12:17

God is our future. So Christ is able to better protect...

01:12:26

Excuse me. Pray for me. Christ is able to better protect

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His church today because the Spirit is here. Okay? He could not be any more present today if He were here even bodily with us because the

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Spirit is here. And as Hebrews chapter 13 says, Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

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And so is the Spirit of truth who is with us now. They share in that changelessness.

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And as Christians, we need the Spirit to lead us and guide us the way that Christ would when

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He was here. And He does that. He's still doing that today. Today. To be honest with you, the church, the church of Christ and what we're doing here today would not exist.

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I'm telling you, it would not exist if the Holy Spirit wasn't still today in the world.

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It would not. It would not. He is quite simply the palpable, tangible substance of the

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Christian life. Everything we are and everything we do is so delicately tied to the

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Spirit. The Spirit is not a tool. The Spirit is not simply an accessory to the

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Christian but the one that we put our trust in. The one who we hope in.

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The one who we walk with. The one who guides us. Everything from the regeneration of your soul to every miracle you've seen to every time

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God aided you to the firm but loving conviction of sin.

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You know, I love that. I thank the Holy Spirit for the conviction of sin in my life.

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You ought to pray that yourself. Holy Spirit, make me sensitive to my sin.

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Holy Spirit, convict me of sin when I need it. Don't let me go along in my sin.

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Convict me. That's loving. All that He does, all the way to the end, when you face death with confidence and you enter eternal life, the

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Holy Spirit is with you. That's His ministry. That's His ministry.

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You see, in November of 2022, a little over a year ago, we went over the famous verse,

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John 3 .16, translated from directly from the Greek. John 3 .16

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says, For God loved the world in this way that He gave us His unique Son, that all believing in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

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Thus far in John, we have heard mostly negative things of the world. That's what makes the statement of John 3 .16

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all the more shocking. It says that God loved the world, and it's not that the world was so good that God loved it.

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And that's what's baffling. What's shocking is that the world is so bad and yet God loved it.

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And He still loves it. Nowhere else in the Gospel or in the

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New Testament is it said that God loves the world like this. This is a shocking statement.

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It functions similarly when it says in the prologue that the Logos was made sarks or flesh.

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It's almost a crude or raw statement. God came for those of the darkness.

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What made God come down to fallenness, to brokenness, to be among evil, to be subject to human weakness, suffering, torment, and shame?

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What made Him come down for that? Love of the world. Love of the world.

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Love of the ones who will even bring those things upon Him. Unbelievable.

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And here in our text today, we see how that love continues to be expressed through the

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Holy Spirit, lavishing those in the world with grace, making them born again, and then ministering to them, guiding them, keeping them in the truth once they're removed from the world and into the church.

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And my final word on this, in verse 15, Jesus said all of this would be disclosed to us.

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And so it's important that we don't bury it. It's important that we don't hoard it. It doesn't stop right there.

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You get what I'm saying? The Holy Spirit doesn't come and this mission stops with the

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Holy Spirit. The mission continues through the Holy Spirit and through you and I.

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Through us. That you and I would be an extension of God's love and mission to the world.

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Just like I said in my introduction regarding legacies. The Father started something.

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The Son came and built it. The Holy Spirit grows it. And the redeemed and adopted children of God live it.

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We live it. Not simply live in it. You don't simply live in it.

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You live it. And that's only possible because of the ministry of the

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Holy Spirit here today. Let's pray some church. Let's pray.

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Oh Lord. You are the one true and living God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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We praise you. We thank you Lord God that you had purposed it so long ago in eternity past that you would send your one and only

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Son for a lost world. People like us.

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People of the darkness and you would make us children of light. And in that predestined plan you would send us, your church the

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Holy Spirit. And Holy Spirit we recognize that you are not a force.

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That you are not an inanimate object. We recognize your distinction and that you are

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God. We love you Holy Spirit. We praise you.

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We thank you that you have glorified the Son and the Son has glorified the Father. We thank you for leading us.

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We thank you for guiding us into all truth Holy Spirit. We thank you for being with us, for being the comforter the helper, the aid to us.

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That we know Jesus we know the love of Jesus because of your love in us

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Holy Spirit. And so we thank you for being with us and being in us.

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And the word of God says that we can grieve you Holy Spirit. And we pray now as a church we confess that we have grieved you

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Holy Spirit and we seek not to. We pray that you would always make us sensitive to your conviction

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Holy Spirit. That you would always make us to go into the truth and lead us not into error as you promised.

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And we pray Holy Spirit that you would cause us to have a living faith.

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A faith that is ready to one day see God and to live eternal life.

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To face what we face everyday because you are with us. We love you