John 16:8-11 (The Spirit Brings Judgment)

Of all the Gospels, the one that talks the most about the Holy Spirit is the Gospel of John.

Now it's not, if you add up Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it's not quite that the Gospel of John talks about it more than all of them combined, but the Gospel of John is where we learn the most about the Holy Spirit.

We've learned a lot so far in our time in the last three years in the Gospel of John as we come to 16 today.

We've learned in chapter one that the Spirit of God descends at the baptism of Christ in the same way that the Spirit descended upon the original creation, where you see the Spirit of God hovering over the water so that at the baptism of Christ, we see that the Spirit is proclaiming that in Jesus there will be new creation.

We see him descend upon Christ in the baptism like he descended upon the ark when Noah and his family were rescued because the Holy Spirit is declaring to us that Jesus is the ark that will rescue the people of God.

If you wanna be rescued by the flood of God's wrath, you must be in Christ.

We see him descending upon Jesus like he did at the Red Sea where the sea was parted because in Jesus is where we get our true freedom from our captors, where we walk away free.

So right there in chapter one, we see in the Spirit's descending upon the believers, we are taught that we get new creation in Christ, salvation in Christ, and freedom in Christ, and that's just chapter one.

In chapter three, we learn that the Holy Spirit is gonna be the one who comes in and gives us brand new birth.

In Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, he's the one who will regenerate us and give us birth from above.

Chapter four, we learn that the Spirit will help us in worship.

Remember when he's talking to the woman at the well where the time is coming where the true worshipers will worship God in spirit and in truth.

It's not just truthiness and it's not just spiritism, it's the Spirit will help us worship.

God in truth.

So the Spirit helps us in our worship.

We learn in chapter seven, this interesting and fascinating moment at the Feast of Tabernacles where Jesus stands up and he says, I am the living water.

And you wonder, what is Jesus doing in that passage? He's pointing back to Ezekiel chapter 47 where the temple of God, this great vision where water flows out of the Holy of Holies and it fills the entire earth with this depth, this river that swallows up the nations.

Jesus is saying, in the Spirit, streams of living water will flow out of the new temple, not the one built in Jerusalem, but you.

Streams of living water will flow out of you because you are made to be the sanctuary of the living God where the Holy Spirit comes in.

That means your heart, dear brothers and sisters, though sinful as it is, your heart is now the mercy seat where God himself has desired to dwell.

So we learn about these things and how the Holy Spirit is these things in the gospel of John.

Highly theological truths that John has taught us that Holy Spirit brings new creation, salvation, freedom, new birth, worship, makes us into a temple of the living God.

We also learn that he's our helper in John 14 through 15.

We see that he's there to live with us, to aid us, to teach us, to remind us of all the things that Christ said.

The Spirit of God is not to remind us of all things, of what Christ has said.

This is a wonderful verse, as we talked about a couple months ago in John 14, that the Spirit is not there to give you new revelation and new canonized material.

A word from the Lord is not what you are receiving when you get those visionary things.

It's a bad burrito that maybe you had the day before.

The Holy Spirit reminds us of what Jesus already said.

That's the word of God.

The Spirit is for the believer.

He's there to help us, to aid us.

That's what the word paraclete means.

It's one of the aspects of what it means, at least we'll talk about another aspect in a moment.

He's there to comfort us and help us.

But we could be tempted in that because chapters one through 15 have laid out a case for the Holy Spirit is for us and he works with us.

We could get this idea that the Holy Spirit, his only role is with the people of God, for the elect.

That he has no role among the pagans.

But today, as we will see, he actually does play a role in the world.

He actually has a trifold ministry to those who are lost.

And that ministry, as we will see, is conviction.

We will learn more about that in a moment.

But before we get there, let's remember where we're at in John 16.

The disciples have left Jerusalem in the upper room and they're traveling to Gethsemane.

They understand, Jesus has told them that I am going to leave you, so they are discouraged.

They're discouraged and Jesus is trying to encourage them through this section of scripture called the travel narrative.

And what he's going to encourage them with is truth that they will cling to for a lifetime.

Now, you ask yourself the question, why were they discouraged? Well, they had many reasons to be discouraged.

They were losing their friend.

That's something worthy of being discouraged about.

They've spent three years with Jesus, intimately getting to know this man, and they're bummed because they're gonna be losing their friend.

They're also losing the incarnate God who's sharing his presence with them, physically, in flesh and blood.

Some of them are already starting to get it.

Not perfectly, but they had flashes, they had moments, they had little moments of lucidity, like when Peter says, you have the words of life, where else shall we go? What do you think Peter's thinking when Jesus says, I'm gonna leave? Peter's like, you can't do that, we need you.

They were worried and frustrated about that, but they were also upset, and I think this was very present on their minds that if Jesus left, they were gonna be public enemy number one in Jerusalem.

At this time, late in the ministry of Jesus there, the people who were against Christ had mobilized, they had started creating councils and secret clandestine meetings to put away Jesus, to arrest him.

Judas has already abandoned the 12, and he's gone to sell out Jesus for 30 measly pieces of silver, which is the price of a common slave.

So, at this point, they were afraid if Jesus goes, what's it gonna look like for us? We're co-conspirators.

We will be tried and hanged on a cross as well.

Now, I wanna give the disciples the same benefit of the doubt I would give you.

They're weak and scared and frail, just like us.

But I think if Jesus is with them, they'd be willing to charge the gates of hell with a squirt gun.

Just like you and I, if Jesus is with us, but now they're facing the fact that Jesus is not gonna be with us, and they're gonna be against the weaponized, hostile Jewish state that is known for murdering the people of God, and if you read the book of Acts, that's exactly what happened to them.

They intuited it quite well.

The Jewish state would come after them, would chase them and persecute them all throughout the Roman Empire.

They would be responsible for killing Stephen, multiple disciples.

It's in fact, I think Suetonius even indicates that the Jews were behind Nero killing Paul and Peter.

They hunted down believers, so they intuited it correctly, and that was a tough pill for them to swallow, knowing that Jesus was going to go away.

It's kind of like, when you know the biggest kid in kindergarten, you're not afraid to go on the playground.

When you're friends with some guy, maybe his nickname is Hoss, you're not afraid to go on the playground because the bully's not gonna bother you, but if he's sick that day, you don't wanna go on the playground, and in a very, very similar way, the people, the disciples were terrified that they don't have Christ.

Again, we've talked about this before, they didn't realize that the surpassing infinite worth of what it would mean that Jesus is gonna leave and he's gonna give them the Holy Spirit, and what we've been talking about the last couple weeks is how Jesus has been convincing them that he's going to comfort them through various different things.

He's gonna be with them, he's gonna help them, he's gonna aid them, he's gonna do all these things.

Today, we're gonna talk about a different side of the same coin, in the same way that he's going to comfort the disciples, he's gonna bring God's enemies through the Spirit under conviction, and we'll talk about what that means in just a moment.

So today, we're gonna talk about three things when it comes to the Holy Spirit and how he's going to interact with the lost or with the pagans or with those who are the enemies of God.

Number one, he's going to convict them of their sin, number two, he's going to convict them for their lack of righteousness, and then number three, he's going to convict them unto judgment.

So if you will, turn with me to John 16, 8 through 11, as we explore a role of the Holy Spirit that's not talked about very often, but is in Scripture.

It'll be John 16, 8 through 11.

This is the word of the Lord.

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

Let's pray.

Lord, I pray that we would see today a role of the Holy Spirit that maybe we've never thought about before.

Lord, we know that you give us your people, you give us fruit of the Spirit, gifts of the Spirit, you sanctify us by your Spirit, you make us more mature in Christ by the power of your Spirit, you are working in our lives by the Spirit, you inhabit us by the Spirit, regenerate us by the Spirit.

Lord, we know that there's so many wonderful and beautiful things that you have done for those who are called according to your name, elect before the foundations of the world.

And yet, Lord, there's also, Holy Spirit, there's a role that you do among the lost, and among the reprobate, and among the enemies of God.

Lord, I pray that in passages like this, we would praise you.

I pray that we would see underlying these verses your holiness, your justice, and your goodness.

And Lord, I pray in this that we would also have great hope that you see us in our suffering, you protect us ultimately from losing what it is that you've purchased for us, and that you will preserve us to the very end.

It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.

Now to start off, this passage is not about Christians, but it is for Christians, just like many verses in the scriptures we've talked about.

This is about how the Holy Spirit is gonna interact with unbelievers.

But the message of it, the application of it, is certainly for us, and we will get to that in a moment.

There's three things this passage says.

They're all connected by the word and.

It says that he will convict the world concerning sin, he will convict the world concerning righteousness, and he will convict the world concerning judgment.

This is a passage about how the Holy Spirit interacts with the world, and not with the church.

Now you and I, if we grew up in Christian culture, the word convict can mean something, and that's not what it means here.

When we say that the Holy Spirit convicted me, we mean that he revealed to us something that was an error in our heart, caused us to have a godly sorrow over our sin, and to turn and to run to Christ.

That's a good conviction that affects believers.

This is not that kind of conviction.

This is the kind of conviction like an inmate in a courtroom who is now brought into the conviction, the penalty, the sentence of his crimes.

He is convicted in the sense that the judge has dropped the hammer.

This kind of conviction does not compel the world towards repentance and freedom.

This is the kind of conviction that gives them over to judgment.

In that way, we will see that this is a courtroom scene in this passage, and the Holy Spirit is our attorney, and there's two lines of evidence that are presented on why the enemies of God should be under judgment.

The first is that they've sinned, and the second is that they don't have any righteousness.

That is the two lines of evidence that we're gonna work through in this passage.

We'll begin with the fact that they have sinned.

Text says, and he, when he comes, the Spirit, will convict the world concerning sin because they do not believe in me.

The question is not that they've sinned by itself, because we know from the Scriptures that all have sinned.

We read in Romans 3, 10 through 12, there's none righteous, not even one.

There's none who understands.

There's none who seeks for God.

All have turned aside and together they've become useless.

There is none who does good, not even one.

We see again in the verse 23 of that same chapter, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

They're not condemned just because they sinned, although all people should be, ought to be condemned for their sin.

That's not only what is going on here.

They're condemned for their sin without a mediator.

You and I have sinned, but in believing in Christ, we have a mediator that represents us before the Father who forgives all of our sins.

They're convicted for their crimes because they do not have a mediator to represent them.

All men, we see this all throughout Scripture and we see this in present day.

All men need justification and all men will create a sort of justification for themselves.

The Christian's only justification is Christ.

I deserve hell, but Christ Jesus has saved me.

But if you ask someone else, why did you do that? Well, it's because of this or because of that or because you did that to me.

There's sort of a self-justification that happens to every single person who is brought under the weight of their own guilt.

We're all seeking justification.

The question is, are you seeking it with a mediator or are you trying to represent yourself before the thrice holy God? The Jews in this circumstance are representing themselves.

They have been abandoned by their God.

This is the specific group that Jesus has in mind when he's talking about the ones who will be brought into conviction for their sins.

Because if you remember earlier in the passage, he says that they're gonna kill you and they're gonna think that they're serving God.

And that's what happens in the book of Acts.

They do kill the Christians thinking that they're serving God.

So from a referential standpoint, Jesus is referring to this group.

He's referring to all groups, but he certainly has them on his mind that they will be convicted for their sin.

And they're not unique, but again, we've said all have sinned.

The ancient Jews sinned, the Oriental sinned, the Romans sinned, the Carthaginians, Grecians, Persians, Pamphylians, they all sinned.

So the Jews are not unique in that.

But they will be damned for their crimes because they are trying to get to heaven without a mediator.

It would be astounding thing for Jesus to say in the first century to the Jews.

The Jews would have objected to this.

They would have said, what are you talking about that we are not gonna have a mediator? We've got Moses.

We've got the temple.

See how everybody is justifying themselves some way or another? We've got the high priesthood.

They would have said, how can you say that to us, Jesus? We don't have a proper mediator.

We have the Torah.

Jesus objects to them and He points out to them that the point of all those things, the point of the temple, the point of the priesthood, the point of the Bible, the point of the Torah, the point of the laws, the point of the sacrifices, the point of the feast, the point of all of it was that it pointed to Him.

And because they've rejected Him and because they're gonna stand before Pilate and say, we have no king but Caesar, they're turning their back on their covenant God.

Jesus is looking at them and telling them that their old covenant trappings are not enough and they're still not enough.

The fact that they sacrificed, the fact that they worshiped at a temple, the fact that they had a high priesthood was never enough.

That was the picture that pointed them to the perfect and they rejected the perfect.

They misunderstood the types and shadows so that Jesus could look at them and say, you don't even understand your own scripture because if you did, you would have known that it was me.

He said, Abraham rejoiced to see my day.

And this group is the group that rejoiced to see Him dead.

They treated their temple, to talk about the perversion of their hermeneutics, they treated their temple like it was a national good luck charm, that they were more sacred and more special than the nations because they had this golden, glistening building at the top of Jerusalem's highest hill.

They treated their priesthood in some ways like an organized crime unit.

You may be like, that's going a little strong, is it? They were extorting the people, they were siphoning money off of them by charging exorbitant rates of exchange in the temple.

They were rejecting your animals so you'd have to buy theirs and they would always mark the price up.

Jesus said that they were fond of riches and great gain, that their God was mammon and not God.

They were using their status and their office to abuse God's people and to extract their resources from them.

There's a lot of megachurch pastors in that boat today.

The true and the better had come and they rejected him.

The true expression of Yahweh's presence was before them and they hated him.

The true high priest was crucified for them and they missed it.

And instead of the sacrificial system, the true sacrifice was there and instead of his blood being applied to their hearts, it stained their guilty hands.

They killed him and they did not repent and they did not believe.

Therefore, they faced their maker without a mediator.

Now, this is not just true of first century Israel, but I do think that it was what was on Jesus's mind when he's trying to encourage that particular group of disciples who were getting ready to go through the worst persecution in church history.

Be of good cheer, have heart because I see you when you're suffering.

I see you and I will avenge your deaths.

I will avenge your suffering and I will preserve you in the spirit.

I think that's what Jesus is talking about, but it's not unique to just the Jews.

All people who don't have a mediator are standing naked and exposed before the king of the universe.

The Jews were hiding behind their old covenant symbols, but the rest of us are hiding behind something if we don't know Christ.

Whether it's, I'm a good person, you've heard that before.

That's our justification.

Well, when I get to heaven, God will certainly pick me because I'm a good person.

How foolish, how foolish to say that the infinitely good and holy God would look at you without Christ and be impressed with you.

You don't know your own sin if you believe that and you don't know the holiness of God.

There's others who say, well, I went to church.

I did good things.

I was a religious person.

And he will spit you out of his mouth if that's all you have.

If you don't have Christ and all you have is your good works and your religion, you will be vomit on the floor of hell.

There's all kinds of ways that we attempt to justify ourself, but if we do not have a mediator, we are guilty because God is holy.

And this leads to a sort of a point, maybe it's tangential, but I think it's important.

You may ask yourself, why does God send people to hell for an eternity? Why is it infinite, eternal, conscious, torment? Yeah, they just send a few times.

Again, you vote grossly misunderstand how many times they've sent and what sin actually is.

Sin is committed against an infinite God and therefore every sin requires an infinite punishment.

So if sin is committed against an infinite God, it is infinitely damnable to you and it will be an eternal consequence to you because you've sinned against an eternal God.

And not just that.

The Bible says that there's weeping and gnashing of teeth in hell.

There's sin that's even being committed in hell.

So if you possibly could spend an affinity to work off your current sins, we don't believe in that.

But if you could, all your current sins of despising God and hell would not be a sin.

It would lock you there and keep you there forever.

That is why hell is eternal.

Because you have sinned against the eternal sovereign.

If you come up right now and punch me in the face, there's not gonna be many consequences because I'm not worth that much.

If you go up and you slap the president in the face, there will be a great consequence.

Whoever the president is, I don't care who he is at the time, there will be a great consequence because he is very important.

Who could be more important than the living God? Every time we spit in the face of God, it carries an eternal, infinite consequence.

I pray no one here actually would defy the living God.

I pray no one here would try to represent themselves before the holiest judge of all on the day of eternity.

I pray that he would be hidden in Christ because that is why he's going to judge the world for sins that they've committed that damn them.

The second thing is he's going to condemn them for their righteousness.

It says in the text, and when he comes, he will convict the world concerning righteousness and concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you no longer see me.

The spirit does not only convict lost people and the enemies of God for the sins that they've committed, he also convicts them for the good and righteous works that they failed to do.

It's not only the sins that you've done, it's the righteousness you've not done.

It's not only the evil you've perpetrated, but the good you've forgotten.

And think about it.

Who of all people would have understood what righteousness means? Hebrew is where the word comes from.

It's the Hebrew people who had the scriptures, who had the stories of Abraham and had the stories of Isaac and Jacob and their foibles and how Abraham believed and God counted it as righteousness.

They would have seen the connection between belief and righteousness.

They would have known that righteousness comes from something outside of you.

It's not something you can do because you're not good enough.

If anyone would have understood righteousness, it would have been Israel.

And all through their history, we see that they fail at just this point.

They elevated their sacrificial system as a way of earning righteousness.

And because of that, God rebukes them time and time again.

Look at Hosea 6.6.

He says, for I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

God is saying to the people, you've elevated sacrifice.

Is this magical, mystical thing that the working of my redemption comes through the blood of the lamb? No, it comes through your covenant loyalty and your belief.

Righteousness, forgiveness of sins come through repentance.

Always, even in the Old Testament.

He's saying, I don't want your bloody offerings if you're not gonna love me.

That's the paradigm.

You have to have the knowledge of God which comes by grace alone before you can have the gifts of God which are righteous deeds.

So they didn't know God.

They didn't know God in Hosea.

They didn't know God rightly in the time of Jeremiah when they spurned the prophet's warnings.

They didn't know God rightly in the time of Esther when they had forgotten who God is or the time of Moses when they sacrificed a golden calf or the time of Malachi where they said, how have we robbed from you? How have we, on and on.

And that paradigm of unbelief continued through every generation of the Jewish people all the way down to the time of Christ.

And it's what Jesus accuses them.

He accuses them of the exact same thing in Matthew 9, 13.

He says, but go and learn what this means.

He's saying, don't even serve me anymore until you learn what this means.

I desire compassion and not sacrifice for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinner.

He's saying, I came to call the ones who know that they're broken and who'll repent.

And then in grace, I will forgive them and share with them my gifts.

Not the ones who are haughty and self-righteous and prideful and who think that if they could just sacrifice enough, then they would strong arm God into giving them the gifts like God is a vending machine.

If I put this in, this will come out, and that is not who God is.

Jesus tells them that they have fantastically missed the point.

And again, they had the scriptures.

They saw that Noah believed God, and it was because of his belief that the flood was coming, that God counted him righteous.

That Abraham, righteousness was demonstrated by his faith alone.

That Job, righteousness was demonstrated by his faith through long-suffering through trial.

Joseph, his faith and righteousness was demonstrated through his moral purity, that he would not do the kinds of things that everyone else around him was doing.

Like Moses, righteousness was demonstrated in faith that manifested itself in a humility.

Like David, a faith that manifested itself in heartfelt worship, like the law that says to care for the widows and the orphans.

Or Jesus, when he said that I desire compassion and not sacrifice, they missed it.

They treated the Old Testament like a spell from Hogwarts that if they could just do this, do this, do that in perfect order, then God would give them favor.

They treated it like a spell instead of a relationship with the living God.

The Pharisees did not have this kind of righteousness.

That's why Jesus said concerning righteousness, they're gonna be brought into conviction because the Father and you will no longer see me.

We have to understand how God thinks about judgment.

It says that they're gonna be judged for their lack of righteousness, but what does that mean? Jesus is removing himself from them, that's the judgment.

Think about Romans one where it says that God gives them over to their sin and to their lust and to their pride.

The longer we run in sin, the more God removes himself and gives us over, removes his presence.

His presence is what sustains us.

It's what makes us.

It's what causes us to be soft to the things of God.

Without the presence of God, dear believers, you and I would be the most tyrannical and wicked people on earth.

Not even worthy of being pitied.

It is his presence that makes us something.

That's why he tells the Israelites, it's not because you were a massive nation or because you had more armies and weapons than all the other nations.

No, what makes you significant is the fact that I am with you.

So when they get under judgment, God removes himself from them.

He abandons them in order to expose who they really are.

And in fact, God does this to us too, but not ultimately.

He doesn't abandon us ultimately, but there are times in our life where God will pull back his presence to expose us and to show us what's really inside of us.

You think about an orange.

You don't really know what's in an orange until you squeeze it.

Sometimes God squeezes us by pulling back from us to show us who we really are so that we can repent.

For the wicked, he pulls back ultimately so that they are without mediator and they are without hope.

And he does this to make it obvious who they are.

This is what he says, 1 John 3.10.

By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious.

Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

What John is saying in this passage and what he's saying in the other passage is it's obvious when someone does not belong to God because God does not allow them to do righteousness.

Because righteousness is not ours, it's God working through us.

That's what Ephesians 2 says, that these things he's working in us, things that he's predestined for us to have before the foundation of the world, these good works that you and I do are not ours, they're him working through us.

And for the wicked, it's him abandoning them to do what's most on their heart already.

One great evidence that you're in Christ is that you begin to hate the things you once loved and to love the things you once hated because God is in you.

You're not gonna do that perfectly, but that is an evidence that you belong to him and an evidence that you don't belong to him.

You may be moral in a societal sense, you may do all kinds of things like serve in charities and everything else, but the heart underneath it is rotten and you cannot do anything that pleases God.

Jesus is essentially telling them that they will not see God.

And the scripture is clear on this.

Psalm 24, three through four says, who may ascend into the hill of the Lord and who may stand in his holy place.

He who has clean hands and a pure heart who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood and is not sworn deceitfully.

David is saying, who could possibly enter into the throne room of heaven? Someone who has a pure heart.

So who is that? If we stand on our own merit, none of us have a pure heart.

None of us have clean hands.

All of us have shed innocent blood.

In some way or another, Jesus says, if you're angry at your brother, you've murdered him in your heart.

Hebrews says it even more clearly, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness that God gives for without which no one will see the Lord.

The consequence of your sin and your lack of righteousness, your sin will damn you to hell.

Your lack of righteousness will leave you abandoned by God forever.

Modern preachers talk about repenting of your sin if they're faithful.

We have all kinds of examples of smiley people from Houston who look like they have chiclets in the front of their mouth who bobbled.

My Texas friends know what I'm talking about.

Live your best life now, which is hogwash.

Like John MacArthur said, you're only gonna live your best life now if you're going to hell.

Some people will go that way and the Lord will judge their ministry.

Faithful pastors will preach on repenting of sins, which I think is good and right.

We should preach on the repentance of sin, but also there's an element here that the Holy Spirit brings up that if we do not have righteousness, we're equally offensive to God.

You see, to get into heaven, as it were, you need two things.

You need a clean record of sin and you also need righteousness.

If you just have a clean record of sin, then you're at zero.

You have nothing.

You haven't gone negative, but if you don't have righteousness, you can't enter it into his rest.

If you don't have holiness, you can't enter into his rest.

So salvation is a two-part work.

It is the first part where Christ eliminates our debt and it's the second part where he deposits his righteousness.

If it's not both, you were not justified before God.

This is why Jesus talks about these two things as the judgment because they violated both of them.

They will be judged and they will be sent to hell for two things, that they've sinned and they have no righteousness.

Both of those are calls for their judgment.

Now, you may be asking yourself, how does this give me any hope? I sin every day and I don't have any righteousness, not compared to God.

If I really understand who God is, I'm like filthy, dirty, polluted rags.

Like Jeremiah says, my heart is deceitful, above all things, sick.

So sick, in fact, who could possibly know it? How are you giving me any hope that I can know this God if I am both a sinner and I have no righteousness? Well, the scriptures address these things, dear brothers and sisters, because you can't do them on your own doesn't mean that they can't be done.

They have to be done by Christ and Christ alone.

For instance, in 1 Peter 3.8, about our sin, it was Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

Christ is the one who died substitutionally for you.

The transaction that happened was your sin was nailed to the cross with Christ so that he could bring you with him down to the grave and out of the grave so that you could be with God.

He is the one only who can forgive you of your sins.

He is the one only who can justify you before the Father, not your good works, not your performance, not anything else, just Christ.

But in reference to our pitiful righteousness, which we have none, 2 Corinthians 5.21 tells us this.

For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The astounding point, dear believer, is that he has not only forgiven you of all your sins, he has made you to be something you could never be on your own.

He has made you to be the righteousness of God so that when God looks at you, he sees the lamb.

When he looks at you, he sees Christ.

So that his gifts are irrevocable.

If he looks at you and he sees Christ, he will never look at you and you look unpleasant to him.

Now, if he looks at you and you look like you, you will always stink.

You will always be a foul, noxious vapor in the nostrils of the Almighty.

But if he sees Christ in you, he will never not find you lovely.

He will never not find you beautiful.

He will never not find you his.

You can't lose what you didn't work for.

You can't forfeit what you didn't earn.

It's his gift to you and it's always his gift to you if you're his.

And it's made possible through belief.

Jesus said the reason that they're gonna be judged for their sin and for their lack of righteousness is because they did not believe.

And because of that, he removes himself from their presence.

Belief and unbelief matter exponentially more than anything else you'll ever do in life.

If you don't believe, you'll be brought under the condemnation and the conviction of the Holy Spirit who will see that work until it's complete.

He will see that work until you are brought into judgment.

But if you believe in Christ through the power of the Spirit, by the electing love of God, the Holy Spirit will see the work to the day of completion, your salvation.

The Holy Spirit's faithful.

He never, ever messes up on his work.

There are days where I don't do good at my job.

I'm sure there are days where you don't do good on yours.

The Holy Spirit always accomplishes his job.

He will either ensure that you are saved and ensure that you make it to the better end or he will ensure that you are damned and that you're brought into the judgment that is yours.

He will not fail in his work and you are not powerful enough to stop him.

This brings us to our final point, the judgment.

The two lines of evidence in the courtroom have been presented, the sin of the sinner and the lack of righteousness in the unrighteous.

And because they have no mediator, because they have no Christ who's going to deal with that for them, they're representing themselves and the only thing left for them is judgment.

It says, and he, when he comes, will convict the world concerning judgment and concerning judgment because the ruler of this world has been judged.

The word here for spirit is paraclete.

It's the same word that's used in John.

Actually, I don't think it's here, but it's the same word that's used in John.

Paraclete means helper, comforter, but it also means defense attorney.

It means the prosecutor.

So in this sense, what the Spirit of God is doing is he is prosecuting the reprobate.

He's bringing their sin and their lack of righteousness before the throne of heaven and the judge will bring the sentence and the sentence will be judgment.

And the evidence that he gives to this is that the ruler of this world has already been judged, which is good news to the Christian.

We tend to, as Christians, think about this, we tend to say the devil made me do it a lot.

Jesus said the ruler of this world has been judged.

That doesn't mean that he's not a sick and mangy, weak and disgusting little lion who crawls around and seeking whom he may devour, but he's wounded.

He's finished, he is mortally wounded because of the work of Christ.

We give the devil far too much power in the life of the believer when he has been judged already.

There's all kinds of evidence to this in the scriptures.

Jesus said that he's gonna bind the strong man.

He's talking about Satan.

He says he's gonna plunder Satan's kingdom.

Satan has no choice in the matter.

He says that he's going to be crushed beneath the advancing church's feet, Romans 16, 20.

That means you and I are a part of seeing that mangy beast continue to be brought under judgment until he's finally thrown into the lake of fire forever.

Says that the gates of hell will not stand, will not prevail against the advancing church.

We've said this many times.

The reason the gates of hell still stand in many places is because we don't advance.

We're afraid of a paper tiger or a paper roaring lion, whichever.

This is good news for the elect that Satan has already been judged.

It's good news for the elect that Jesus' kingdom will prevail, will triumph, and will go to the ends of the earth.

This is good news that you cannot have stolen from you what Christ has earned for you.

This is good news that the enemy cannot take from you, cannot harm you ultimately because of what Christ has done.

This is good news, but this is not good news for the unbeliever that Satan has been judged.

Think about it this way.

The reason we know we're going to be saved is because Christ raised from the dead, and he is the first fruits of our salvation.

He's the first one to be raised, so therefore we will be raised in time with him.

Think about it when it comes to Satan.

God goes after the head of wickedness so that he's the first fruits of destruction so that everybody who's apart from Christ may know that they will be judged because he was the first one, and their judgment will follow.

In the same way that we can have assurance that Christ will raise us from the dead because he was raised from the dead, they can have assurance that they will be judged because Satan was crushed by the feet of Christ.

Again, no good news to unbelievers, and this is where I would implore you, your sins will bring you under condemnation if you have no mediator.

If you don't have Christ today, you are representing yourself before the throne of a thrice holy God, and you will not prevail.

Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ so you will be saved, so that you won't represent yourself before the Father.

And I would implore you also, if you have no righteousness to offer, you're in good company, none of us do, but by knowing Christ, he will give you that righteousness that you might not even fathom, you might not be able to fathom it.

You might not even be able to understand it tangibly, but it will be yours, and by the promises of God, by his death, burial, and resurrection, when God looks at you, you will be considered to him the righteousness of Christ, and without that, you will be considered worthy of your destruction.

Please, I beg you, if this is you, if you do not know Christ, repent.

We know that only God can raise life from the dead, we know that only God can cause this message to take root in the hearts of unbelievers, but we still implore, because we're not God, and we don't know who that is, we implore you to repent.

But if you're the Christian, I pray that this message would give you hope, because the judgment that is coming upon the world means that God sees you, he sees your hurt, he sees your suffering, and he loves you, and he will bring to light the things that are done in the darkness, and he will bring judgment, because he's a God who is just, and he will bring you home safely to heaven, not just because he's given you gifts, and not just because his spirit has sealed you, but because he's promised to deal with the wicked in the world, and when that wicked is expunged from the world, you and I will be hidden in Christ, we will not be destroyed, because of what Christ has done, and that is good news.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you that in the torrent of your wrath, that we have been clothed with Christ, your blood has been painted on our hearts so that the destroyer will not come in.

Lord, let this be good news to us.

Lord, we are not a people who rejoices in the death of the wicked by no means.

Lord, we're a people, I pray that we're a people who would want to share the good news of Christ with everyone, because Lord, we don't know your decreed will, and we don't know who the elect are, so Lord, I pray that we would declare it faithfully to everyone.

But Lord, we do rejoice, because you are good, and you are holy, and you will bring to completion the good work that you have started in us, and Lord, for that, we have great courage and great hope.

Even if the enemy grow, even if they look menacing in this life, we have great hope, because you will do what you've promised.

It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.