"The Third Person" Pt 2
John 16:7-8
John 16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
8 And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
Introduction: Last week as a part of our lesson on the Holy Spirit we quoted from John 16 and stated that verses 7-11 were a declaration of the Spirit's work in the world. That is primarily in the area of reproof or (conviction) of sin. First, let's examine:
I. THE PERSON OF CONVICTION
a. The source of conviction
Jesus said that "...when he is come, he will reprove..." The Holy Spirit is the reprover, the agent of conviction. His work in the world is absolutely essential especially where the call and claims of the Gospel are concerned. Several things about His work are apparent. First, conviction is critical to salvation. The Scriptures teach that we cannot be saved unless we are drawn to Jesus and the Holy Spirit is the one who draws us.
John 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him...
The Father draws us to Christ through the work of the Spirit! Second, conviction leads us to repentance which is also essential to salvation.
Acts 17:30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
Romans 2:4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
2 Corinthians 7:9 Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.
10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.
b. The scope for conviction
He is to reprove "...the world..." His minister and work is global in it's focus. If God is not willing for any to perish then it goes without saying the He has sent the Holy Spirit to deal with the entire world and this will be true of the Holy Spirit until the coming of Christ and the close of the probation of man. A very dear friend of mine and one of the most effective soul-winners I know made a statement many years ago that is rooted in this truth. He said, "I believe that God is dealing with people everywhere all the time."
c. The substance of conviction
In respect of sin (peri hamartias). Concerning the reality of sin as missing the mark and as wronging God and man, and not a mere slip or animal instinct or devoid of moral responsibility or evil.
And of righteousness (kai peri dikaiosunēs). The opposite of "sin" and to be yearned for after conviction. Cf. Rom 1:19-3:21 about the necessity of the God-kind of righteousness and the Sermon on the Mount for Christ's idea of righteousness.
And of judgment (kai peri kriseōs). As certain to come as condemnation because of sin and the lack of righteousness. These are not played out motives in human life, but basal. For this ministry we have the help of the Paraclete. The Paraclete is here spoken of "not as man's advocate with God (1 John_2:1), but as Christ's advocate with the world" (Bernard).
Robertson's Word Studies
II. THE PROCESS OF CONVICTION
Nowhere in Scripture is the process of conviction illustrated better than in the life of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-24. There are so many things we could say about the life of this young man this morning. There is one in particular that I would like to share: It concerns the young man's request for his inheritance.
Kenneth Bailey, in his penetrating explanation of Luke's story, shows that the son's manner of leaving is tantamount to wishing his father dead. Bailey writes:
For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son's request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has always been emphatically the same . . . the conversation runs as follows:
Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?
Never!
Could anyone ever make such a request?
Impossible!
If anyone ever did, what would happen?
His father would beat him, of course!
Why?
The request means--he wants his father to die.
Bailey explains that the son asks not only for the division of the inheritance, but also for the right to dispose of his part. "After signing over his possessions to his son, the father still has the right to live off the proceeds . . . as long as he is alive. Here the younger son gets, and thus is assumed to have demanded, disposition to which, even more explicitly, he has no right until the death of his father. The implication of 'Father, I cannot wait for you to die' underlies both requests."
a. Emotionally
The Prodigal did not like the "hog pen." It is my belief that the Prodigal felt the "goads of conviction" during the entire time that he was away from the Father's house in a foreign land. But it was not until he had lost his funds, friends and food that he began to hear the "voice" of the Reprover! Sin will certainly take you farther than you want or ever intended to go!
b. Intellectually
Things were better at the Father's house. He left the Father's house because he wanted to cast off the restraints and rules that he had been raised to live by. Those restraints and rules were always, "raining on his parade..." so to speak.
ILL - Rembrandt the artist painted two self-portraits that are particularly telling. The first shows him as a young man full of life and vitality. Twenty years later Rembrandt painted another picture of himself. As a young man he determined to deny himself no pleasure. He, therefore, sought out every delight and followed his appetite. Hence, one by one the torches of his life went out. Having been untrue to himself, he lost faith in others. In middle age we see the artist shrunken, an old rag around his throat, weakness in his chin, the mark of the beast upon his brow, the eyes heavy and dull, without vision or beauty. There are two pictures. The second shows the result of sin. His body was ruined by his own wickedness. In his youth he lived for his own ideals and for God. Twenty years later, after living for self and sin, the lights had gone out of his life. His body was a noble mansion given over to darkness and decay. Evie Megginson
c. Volitionally
The Holy Spirit also deals with our will. Read again from Luke's Gospel and you will see this in the life of this lost boy:
Luke 15: 18a, 20a "...I will arise and go...And he arose..."
A man who is mired in the hog pen of sin must act in order to move from the outhouse to the penthouse!
III. THE POWER OF CONVICTION
OSWALD CHAMBERS ON CONVICTION OF SIN
Oswald Chambers: "Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses the conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God."
Conviction of sin is the unbearable burden of all of your sin and filthiness before a holy and righteous God. The word in the Greek carries the idea of exposing your sin. When the Spirit of God brings this type of conviction it reveals your total bankruptcy before God. The burden of that sin can only be overcome by realizing God's blessing of salvation. The verses tell us that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. When does salvation take place? When we stop disagreeing with the truth of our rebellion against God. At this point we no longer have the pride or arrogance to say "I'm good."
(From a sermon by Billy Ricks, The ministry of the Holy Spirit, 1/22/2011)
a. We think rationally
Luke 15:17 And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
Ill - I remember well when the Holy Spirit helped me come to a conviction that I was a sinner and needed a Savior. I was a young adult of 20, married, and the father of one child at the time. I had been running with the boys and come to the place of desiring a divorce from my wife. Also, I was doing drugs, dealing drugs, and had an unhealthy fear of dying. I decided to go to a "fortune teller" along with one of my friends to find out more about my fate. It was there in Buena Vista, Georgia that the Holy Spirit continued the process of convicting me that the Help I needed was God.
This evil fortune teller asked questions and planted thoughts in my mind that would later be used by the Holy Spirit to convict me of my sinfulness. Questions like is your wife pregnant? Has she ever had a miscarriage? Just be patient, wait, you'll get your divorce in a year or so.
Well, we drove back home and when I got to the house Kathy asked me what the fortune teller told me. Of course, I didn't tell her everything, but as we talked she said to me, "Bruce, you know the Lord gives you something and if you don't live right, He'll take it away!" At that moment the Holy Spirit convicted me that something was not right in my life.
My friend had asked me earlier if I realized I had been talking about death for over a week. Well, I was under conviction! I went on to work on Monday morning, but by 11:00 am I could stand it no longer. I went to my dad and said, "I've got to go." He replied, "Where are you going?" "I don't know, but I've got to go." I walked right out with Dad's mouth standing wide open, got into my car, and reached down for a Winston cigarette when a pain in my chest drew me to a fetal position in intense pain and weeping. "Help, help I yelled!" Then I sought to get myself under control. As this intermittent pain and suffering occurred I drove in front of the First Baptist Church in Dadeville where I had joined as a 10 year old and made a rededication as a teenager.
My thought was, "This pastor doesn't know me and I don't know him, but if I can just get all this stuff off my chest I'll be okay." As I stood in front of the Secretary this pain came one more time and I fell to the floor rolling and yelling, "Help, help!" Well, I finally got with the Pastor and shared with him for over an hour everything I had ever done wrong. His response was, "Bruce, everything you've shared with me is what the Bible calls sin and it says, 'All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.' Bruce, what you need is Jesus." I said, "If Jesus is what I need, Jesus is what I want." Right there in the Pastor's Study we knelt and I prayed to receive Christ as my Savior. And it was the Holy Spirit who helped me know that it was Jesus I needed. Bruce Willis
b. We speak remorsefully
Charles Finney, after spending a day in the woods in prayer and fasting, preached a sermon that night entitled "Sinners In the Hands of An Angry God" in a phenomenally irreligious congregation. The sermon was accompanied by such divine power that the whole congregation, except one man, fell prostrate upon the floor, and voiced their agony under conviction of sin, in such loud outcries that the preacher was forced to stop.
Christ Life Newsletter.
Listen to the voice of the prophet Isaiah in chapter 6 of the book that bears his name, "...woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips..."
c. We act resolutely
Luke 15:18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee...
d. We behave respectfully
When the Prodigal left home he wanted his Father to die but his response to the convicting power of the Holy Spirit has not only drawn him back the Father's house but also to the Father's heart! Disrespect has been replaced with respect! Ill will had been replaced by good will! Open rebellion had been replaced by obedience! Haughtiness had been replaced by humility! When he left home he refused to listen to his Father's entreaties but now he hangs on his Father's every word!
Luke 15:21 And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.
Life point: In closing let me say that the Third Person, the Holy Spirit is the reprover of this world. He convicts us of our sins. At the point of conviction we can respond in three ways. First, we can resist by hardening our heart to His work. People do this all the time and most don't think or know about the consequences of rebellion in conviction.
Proverbs 29:1 He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
Clenched Fist Toward God
A story I heard personally from Malcolm Muggeridge (that stirred me then and still does even yet) was his account of a conversation he had with Svetlana Stalin, the daughter of Josef Stalin. She spent some time with Muggeridge in his home in England while they were working together on their BBC production on the life of her father. According to Svetlana, as Stalin lay dying, plagued with terrifying hallucinations, he suddenly sat halfway up in bed, clenched his fist toward the heavens once more, fell back upon his pillow, and was dead.
The incredible irony of his whole life is that at one time Josef Stalin had been a seminary student, preparing for the ministry. Coming of Nietzschean age, he made a decisive break from his belief in God. This dramatic and complete reversal of conviction that resulted in his hatred for all religion is why Lenin had earlier chosen Stalin and positioned him in authority--a choice Lenin too late regretted. (The name Stalin, which means "steel," was not his real name, but was given to him by his contemporaries who fell under the steel-like determination of his will.) And as Stalin lay dying, his one last gesture was a clenched fist toward God, his heart as cold and hard as steel.
Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God, (Word Publ., Dallas: 1994), p. 26.
Second, we can procrastinate. There is an incident in the ministry of the Apostle Paul that serves to illustrate this point.
Acts 24:25 And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.
Third, we can respond in repentance and faith and come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Acts 9:5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
