John 16: 1 - 11
Kicked out of church – So What!
1 “These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. 2 They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. 3 And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me. 4 But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them. “And these things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you. 5 “But now I go away to Him who sent Me, and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
Do you know of anyone who was asked not to come back to your church? Sometimes the church goes so far which is rare these days to ‘excommunicate’ someone. I have observed these types of action and I found out something significant. The people who have this done to them do not care. These people usually do one of two things. Mostly they do not even worry or bother to seek out any Christian fellowship anymore. The other position that they take is that they just go to another church.
Besides the Temple, the synagogues were the primary and regular place of religious gatherings and fellowship in Jewish communities throughout the ancient world. As these passages in John indicate, to be put out of the synagogue was a very grave issue. People sought to avoid being ‘put out of the Synagogue because it meant that you were outside of the community and without contact with God’s people. Furthermore, because it involved exclusion from the Jewish sacred assemblies, it automatically entailed a loss of access to the ritual sacrifices associated with divine forgiveness and acceptance.
So, people today would say that ‘So you are kicking me out of your church – big deal!’ However, this was a frightening thing to those living in Israel. Suppose the order was given that you couldn’t buy or sell. How would you survive? Well you might say that was then and this is now. Guess what, what goes around comes around as this very same thing will happen to Christians who will not follow the Antichrist. We read this in the book of Revelation chapter 13 verse 7, “And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. If you do not comply with what the law imposes then they will not allow you to be a part of their society.
But all of this will be ‘then’ so let us get back to now and take a look at the Gospel of John.
1 “These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. 2 They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. 3 And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me.
Take a look again at the statement that our Holy Lord told His disciples ‘They will put you out of synagogues.’ They will be rejected and excluded from the nation of Israel. The word was circulated that no one in the nation should have anything to do with them. They would be ostracized from society.
Although this is very intense and harsh against those taking the ‘Good News’ to others, this works out for the furtherance of the Gospel. Remember that our Lord had instructed His disciples to go into all the world and make disciples from all nations. If you remember in the book of Acts they didn’t go anywhere. They stayed in Jerusalem. Our Lord got them moving in their chosen ministries by allowing persecution to come against them. So by being thrown out of their homeland they were forced to do exactly what the Lord wanted them to do.
4 But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them. “And these things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you. 5 “But now I go away to Him who sent Me, and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.
The Lord’s Ambassadors will indeed need to remember His warnings, for often they will be confused at the failure of men to see and understand, at the hardness of heart that prevents men responding, and at the fierceness of the wrath that is directed against them. And they will begin to question themselves, and God. This is a reminder to us that we too must not expect the Christian life to be easy and rosy. If men would not receive Christ, we should not be surprised if they will not hear us.
Our Lord Jesus recognizes that His disciples are dazed. In spite of His many warnings they have still not realized that it is God’s purpose that He should die at the Passover. And yet they are conscious that He Is talking of death. To them it must have seemed so unreal. They must have been thinking, ‘Why do we not just slip away and avoid the danger as we have done before?’
So He makes it clear that He is giving them these warnings because His time to go has now come. In the future He will no longer be around in the flesh in order to give the guidance needed at the time, as He has in the past. But they must recognize that this is because He is going to the One Who had sent Him, and that His death will not be as a result of failure but will be as a result of the fulfillment of God’s purposes.
If you have been going through the Gospel of John with us from chapter 1 then this statement from our Lord seems somewhat out of place - ‘None of you asks, ‘where are you going?’ Although they were sorrowful, they were not asking the right questions. Now they know that He is about to die they should have wanted to know where He is going. They needed a new perspective. They needed to recognize that everything was following God’s plan, that His future was under control and that His destiny was certain.
It was true that previously they had asked such questions, but that had been out of curiosity rather than faith, thinking that He meant that He was going on a journey. Now their hearts are dulled and they are instead taken up with sorrow. They have at last realized that He really is going. But they have no thought to ask where, for their minds are still fixed on earthly things. To them the future spoken of by the prophets was to be fulfilled on earth. They looked for an earthly kingdom and battles fought on earth. They had no recognition of heavenly realities. So they did not know what to think, and did not want to find out.
This was the reason why their minds were in the wrong place. It was because they had continually thought of an earthly kingdom and of an earthly Messiah. They had a hard time conceiving that man’s future lies outside this world where heavenly battles were to be fought. It would only be later that they would realize that the promises to Abraham of ‘a better country’ would be fulfilled in Heaven. Now He is calling them to look upwards and beyond earthly things to heavenly realities.
7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.
The Lord says that He will show them where He is going. He is going to the place from where He can send the Holy Spirit to them. And He points out that this means that, although it may not seem like it, His departure will be best possible thing for them. For until He has offered Himself for the sins of many, they cannot know the full work of the Holy Spirit acting in the world. Thus His departure will not be the disaster that they think, but will be a springboard into the future, a preparation for glorious success. It will not the final tragic end to a promising ministry. Up to now they have been at school. Now they are to graduate and begin the task for which He has trained them, assisted by the greatest power of all time.
Have you ever thought about the reason why the Holy Spirit would not come to them unless The Lord Jesus goes away? I believe that there could not be separate activities of the Triune God on earth which conflicted with each other. While The Holy Lamb of God our Lord Jesus was present in human form on earth the concentration had to be on Him. But now that He was going to return to Heaven the outstanding work of the Holy Spirit prophesied by the prophets could begin.
8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
Once our Precious Holy Spirit came our Lord Jesus said that ‘He will convict the world.’ The basic meanings are;
(1) "To convict or convince someone of something"
(2) "To bring to light or expose something, and thus reveal guilt”
(3) "To correct or punish someone".
The last is clearly not His purpose at this time. It may well be that it is a combination of the first two that is in mind. He convinces and convicts. This work will mainly be accomplished through His disciples and their lives and preaching, followed by the lives and preaching of those who follow them.
‘He will convict the world of sin -- because it believes not on me’. This means that He will make clear the sin of men’s unbelief. Not to believe in Christ is the greatest sin of all for it is to sin against Him Who is the light, and reveals the darkness of the heart. It is to hide from the light. The light has shone revealing the truth about God and His love for man revealed in the cross and in the giving of His only Son. By rejecting Him men show what their hearts are really like deep down. Thus through God’s people the Spirit will expose men’s unbelief, and cause them to be declared guilty. Guilty because of what they are, and guilty of not believing in, and responding to, the light from God. He will bring home the fact that when the world as a whole rejects the One Who has come as a light into the world they do so because their deeds are evil, and they are therefore condemned because of it.
This my friends is the ‘Un-pardonable Sin’ The sin of people against the light from God is the more inexcusable because the coming of the One Who was the light was testified to by such great signs. There are no excuses at all. People deliberately close their minds to the truth of The Son of God. They are therefore doubly guilty.
Second our King and Master points out that ‘He will convict the world of righteousness -- because I am going to the Father and you see me no more.’ The presence of our Lord Jesus in the world has revealed more fully than ever before what true righteousness is. He was righteousness personified and His life and teaching had shown forth righteousness in all its true glory. Thus the work of the Spirit may be seen as taking over that task of revealing what true righteousness is to the world, when Jesus has gone to the Father, again mainly through God’s people and through God’s word.
The Holy Spirit convicts the world of righteousness because He brings home to people what true righteousness is. He will convince some of their own need of righteousness and how they will be able to accomplish it which is only through Christ Jesus.
Then our Lord adds that ‘He will convict the world of judgment --- because the prince of this world has been judged. The prince of this world is Satan as taught to us in the Gospel of Luke chapter 4 verses 5-7, “5 Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 And the devil said to Him, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. 7 Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be Yours.”
Satan informs us that because of His deceit in getting our ancestors Adam and Eve to sin that he obtained the title deed to earth. He did not realize that when our Precious Lamb of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died on the cross, Satan lost! The title deed now went to the 2nd Adam who Is God’s Son
What is very significant here is that Satan has been ‘Judged’ and found guilty. So, why is he still around. The answer is that his sentence has not been activated – but it will.
This situation teaches me and hopefully you how great the Love of our Great God Is. Think with me about this for a moment. We read this factor about Satan in the book of Ezekiel chapter 28 which reports about the king of Tyre. However, we know from the following the earthly king could not have been in The Garden of Eden, so we are talking about God’s great creation of His worship leader Lucifer, “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering: The sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, turquoise, and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created. 14 “You were the anointed cherub who covers; I established you; You were on the holy mountain of God; You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones. 15 You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you.”
Lucifer fell and took one third of the angels with him in his rebellion against Jehovah El.yon – The Lord Most High. He is insane. He has been on a rampage to cause harm ever since the creation of men and women. Yet in all this evil our Great God wins out in all situations. Yes, one day we will be around to see Satan sentence finally implemented and that he will be cast into hell. But in all of this I see a little of the great loving heart of God Who will implement His judgment but I believe with a heavy broken heart to one who was His finest creation and use to lead all the angels in worship - Sad, very sad indeed. If you are a Pastor who had your worship leader fall into sin then you somehow have a little idea of the sadness of our Great God.
Now someone might be thinking that I am a little too kind in my words regarding Satan. I was watching the TV and this guy was screaming how he is going to get Satan. He goes on and on and screams ‘I cast you out you……’ Now wait a minute our Lord teaches us not to be taking that kind of attitude. In the book of Jude we read this about bad mouthing Satan and the fallen angels, “8 Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. 9 Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” 10 But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. 11 Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
The angels are God’s creations not ours. Like the old saying goes, ‘Who died and made you the boss?’ Our Holy and Magnificent God Is the One to take care of all this so let us let Him.
We must compare in this regard our Lord Jesus’ words recorded in chapter 12 verses 31-32, ‘now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out’. There they are linked with His being lifted up on the cross. As our Holy Savior Jesus Is lifted up on the cross for man’s sin, and then finally resurrected in vindication of His righteousness, this expresses and declares God’s judgment on the world for its sins, and on its ways and on its prince. In the final analysis this can only refer to Satan for it was he and his minions who were defeated at the cross (Colossians 2.15). It is this revealed judgment that the Holy Spirit will bring home against the world, declaring the world guilty, producing response from some and rejection to final judgment in others.
Thus we may sum up that the work of the Holy Spirit through the disciples, His people and His word will be to make mankind aware of its need and sinfulness, especially in respect of its attitude to the One Whom God sent. He will bring home to man what true righteousness is, and how he has fallen short of it, and how Christ has provided true righteousness for guilty man on the cross resulting in His own vindication. And He will make clear the final judgment of God on all who fail to respond as evidenced by His work and victory on the cross, while in the light of that revealed judgment causing some to be convinced and respond to Him.
