THE
SPIRIT OF TRUTH
John 16:5-16
In a message last summer I gave a challenge to bear fruit –
the fruit of the Spirit – which as a by-product would also bring in converts to
the kingdom.
Now think on this for a moment – if you bear the fruit of
the Spirit, if your life is overflowing with love and compassion and grace, if
your life glows with the goodness of Jesus Christ in your life – wow! You would have the world beating a path to
your feet, adoring you (along with Jesus Christ, of course). NO! NO! NO!
Quite the contrary, Jesus warns, the
disciples of Jesus should not be at all surprised when the world hates
you. After all, the world hated Him
before it hated you. And we have talked
about the reason before – the world is living in the darkness of sin – they do
not want to come to the light - the light shows them for what they are – the
light reveals the blackness of their sin.
They just can’t stand that at all.
This is quite unique – founders of most organizations and especially of religions, will
attempt to present a glorious future for their organizations. The method of the world is to build up the
wonderful benefits and to play down the hardships and disadvantages and
privations and sacrifices. How different
our Lord is! Jesus prepares His
disciples for a life of hardship in the world. (John 14:27)
He said that if we are going to
follow Him, we must take up our cross—not His cross—our own cross, and follow
Him. If we suffer with Him down here, we
shall reign with Him up there. He was despised and rejected. He was a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with
grief. He said His followers are
going to be in the world but not of the world and that the world will hate
them. He made all of that very
clear. He never said that it would be
easy for His followers down here. Friends,
I'm very candid to say again that if you are standing for Christ, it is going
to cost you something.
One of the great difficulties is, of course, that there are
a lot of folk who view themselves as good folk next to the rest of the
world. As such they think they need no
redemption – their darkness is so dense that they are completely blind to their
need.
Brothers and sisters, it is not easy to bring them to
faith. But that does not mean we give up
on them. We must persevere in the work
God has called us to do.
That brings us to today’s message. We are not in this work alone. Jesus gives a great promise to all disciples. We are approaching Easter and the great
transition.
Jesus
had been telling the disciples that he would very soon be leaving them to
return to His Father. Now he tells them
it is necessary for Him to leave. It
would turn to their benefit. They would not be left without help
and comfort. Jesus would send the Holy
Spirit to be our Helper. It was to the
advantage of the disciples that the Helper should come. He would empower them, give them courage,
teach them, and make Christ more real to them than He had ever been
before. The Helper would not come until
the Lord Jesus went back to heaven and was glorified. Of course, the Holy Spirit had been in the
world before this, but He was coming in a new way — to convict the world and to
minister to the redeemed.
He
now describes the work the Holy Spirit would be doing.
The Holy Spirit will be in all
places. He is right with me today and He
is with you today. Jesus says this is
better. He will send the Comforter, the Paraclete, and He will come to us and dwell in us.
The first work of the Holy Spirit is
to convict (some translations use reprove
– another term is convince). It is a legal term. When the Holy Spirit is come, He will convict
the world in the way a judge or a prosecuting attorney presents evidence to
bring a conviction. The Spirit of God
wants to present evidence in your heart and in my heart to bring us to a place
of conviction, and that, of course, means a place of decision. There must be a conviction before we can turn
in faith and trust to Jesus Christ.
In the present ministry of the Holy
Spirit in the world, He will convict the world of three things: sin, righteousness, and judgment. The Holy Spirit will convict the world of
sin. Our Lord explains for us what that
sin means. "Sin, because they
believe not on me.” What is the greatest
sin in all the world?
Murder?
No. Who are the greatest sinners
in this age? We've had some rascals,
haven't we? Every age has had
rascals. We might point out Hitler, or
Stalin, or Karl Marx, or Saddam Hussein or the Mafia. Who is the greatest sinner today? I want to say to you very carefully that you
could be the greatest sinner living today.
You may say, "Now wait a minute, you can't say that about me! I'm
no rascal; I'm a law-abiding citizen.”
The question is this: Have you accepted
Christ? Unbelief is a state and there is
no remedy if you refuse to trust Christ.
"Of sin, because they believe not on me.” If you do not trust Him, you are lost. It is just as simple as that. It is just as important as that. This is a decision that every person must
make. The man today, whoever he is, if
he is rejecting Jesus Christ, is, in the sight of God, the greatest
sinner. Remember that Jesus said, "If I had not come and spoken unto
them, they had not had sin: but now they
have no cloak for their sin” (John
Secondly, He will convict the world
of righteousness. Jesus Christ was
delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification. Jesus Christ returned to the Father because
He had completed His work here. When He
died on the cross, He died a judgment death.
He took my guilt and your guilt and He died in our place. He was delivered for our offenses and raised
for our justification. He was raised
from the dead that you and I might not only have our sins subtracted, but so
that we might have His righteousness added.
That is very important because you and I need righteousness. It is not enough to have our sins
forgiven. We cannot stand in God's
presence if we are nothing more than pardoned criminals. Christ has made over to us His
righteousness. That is the righteousness
Paul spoke of: "…. that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having my own
righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in
Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Phil. 3:8-9). He
not only subtracts our sin, but He adds His righteousness. If we are to have any standing before God, we
must be in Christ and He is our righteousness.
I want to point out here that the
conviction which comes through the Holy Spirit will be constantly challenging
us to live Christ-like. We cannot now
continue to live a life that bears no resemblance to Jesus’ likeness. Do you have a foul mouth, a temper, etc.
The presence of the Holy Spirit also
convicts the world of coming judgment.
The fact that He is here means that the devil has already been condemned
at the cross and that all who refuse the Savior will share his awful judgment
in a day yet future.
It is difficult for a great many believers
to understand that we live in a judged world.
Some may say they'll take their chances.
They act as if they are on trial.
You are not on trial. God has already
declared you a lost sinner, and He has already judged you—"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal
life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom.
Today many people don't like to hear
about judgment, and they resent it a great deal. The lost world hates many things about
God: for instance, His omnipotence. They don't like the fact that it is His
universe and He is running it His way.
They don't like it that God saves by grace and that man has already been
declared lost.
These are the three things of which
the Holy Spirit convicts the world.
We don't know it all. We are to keep growing in grace and in the
knowledge of Him. How can we do it? Just reading the Bible is not the complete
answer; the Holy Spirit must be our Teacher as we read.
The Spirit of God is the Spirit of Truth. He will lead and guide you into all truth.
He guided the apostles just as the Lord said He would, and we find these
truths in the Epistles. The Spirit of
God came to these men at Pentecost, and He guided them in the truth both in
their preaching and in their writing.
We can see how this was fulfilled in
the apostles. The ministry of the Holy
Spirit has been to complete the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Epistles glorify Christ and show Him as
the Head of the church. They speak of
His coming again to establish His kingdom.
The Epistles are the unfolding of the person and ministry of
Christ. They also tell of things to come
and certainly the Book of Revelation does this.
Notice the
seven steps in the work of the Holy Spirit:
(1) The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, has come; (2) He will guide
you into all truth; (3) He will not speak of Himself; (4) He shall speak
whatsoever He shall hear; (5) He will show you things to come; (6) He shall
glorify Jesus; and (7) He shall receive of mine and show it unto you.
How can you tell when the Holy
Spirit is working? He will glorify
Christ. When in a meeting or a Bible
study you suddenly get a glimpse of the Lord Jesus and He becomes wonderful,
very real, and meaningful to you, that is the working of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, "He shall glorify me."
". . . Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the
things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his
Spirit ...” (1 Cor. 2:9-10). The
Spirit is the One who searches the deep things of God and He alone can show
these things to us.
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