The Holy Spirit's Work

Thank you, Darnie. Thank you for praying for me and for Desiree, especially. Well, I hope you've had a good and restful Easter, and that we're getting ready for term two for our kids and ensure our uni students as well. This morning, we're going to be looking at part of a moment where Jesus was telling his disciples some incredible teachings just before he was going to the cross. It's called the upper room discourse in John chapter 14 through to 17. And I think it's in light of Easter last weekend, it's good for us to hear that.

It comes to us with renewed strength this morning. I wonder if you've ever experienced this: not seeing something right in front of you until someone has pointed it out to you. I'm a married man now, by God's grace. And I've discovered what it means to have a boy look in the cupboard, in the closet, in the garage. To have a boy look, just trying to find something and not being able to find it for the life of me.

And then needing to ask my wife, where is the drill? Where is the salt? Where are my shoes? And Desiree, without batting an eye, can say, It's right in front of you. It's down there.

It's up here or whatever. I've discovered the phenomenon of the boy look. For many years, my family and I also had the privilege of being able to go on safari in the Kruger National Park in South Africa, which some of you will know. One of the most interesting things could happen there where you are out in the wilderness trying to spot amazing animals. Often, you'd come to a place where you see 10 cars piled up, parked next to each other, obviously looking at some amazing beast.

Dad would come along in his car and park right next to a car, and we would all sort of try and peer into the bush. Frustratingly, many times, try as you might, you couldn't find what everyone else was so excitedly looking at. Until you motion to someone in the other car, wind down your window, please. What are you seeing? What are you looking at? A leopard might be sitting 10 metres away from you, but its camouflage causes you to miss him completely.

Without the help of the other person in that car pointing out the reality of that leopard, it's as though that leopard never existed to you. As Jesus prepares his disciples for the cross he was about to go to, he shares an insight about God that is something similar to this: that unless God intervenes and points out to us several realities that are of crucial importance for life, we won't see the reality of the cross. Without his illumination, we will live as though the cross never existed. This morning, Jesus will tell us that there is only one way that we can see this clearly. It is not to be found in mystical practices.

It's not to be found in self-help books or Jordan Peterson videos. It's not even to be found in knowledge of scripture, as important as that is. No. The only way we can see clearly is through the existence and work of the Holy Spirit who reveals our disease and guides us to the remedy. And so the Lord Jesus is going to teach us by his word, through the working of the Holy Spirit this morning about all that in John chapter 16.

And we're going to read from the second half of verse four. John 16, the second half of verse four. The ESV has broken that into a paragraph by itself under the heading: the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus says to his disciples in the upper room, I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. But now I'm going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, where are you going?

But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper, the helper, will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the father, and you will see me no longer. Concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the father has is mine. Therefore, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

So far, our reading. This is the word of the Lord. So firstly, we see this morning in verses 5 to 11, the spirit revealing our disease. Our passage begins in verses 4 and 5, where Jesus begins to say that he has spared his disciples the truth about his leaving them. Even with his predictions, remember, during his ministry, where he said to his disciples plainly, clearly, that he would be killed by the chief priests and the rulers. And yet, amazingly to us, the disciples lived in a fog of ignorance.

They just don't understand what Jesus means by those words. Is he speaking spiritually, perhaps? Jesus often spoke metaphorically. Is he speaking metaphorically of dying? What does Jesus mean by those words?

And we see Jesus not pressing home those statements. He doesn't explain to the disciples what that means. But now the night before going to the cross in the upper room, he explains that his all too short ministry of three years is coming to an end. The disciples would not be seeing him again. Yet Jesus says to them that it is good that he is going away.

It is good that he is going away. Verse 7: it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. Now famously, this word for helper in the Greek is paraclete, the paraclete. And this helper can only come, Jesus says, if Jesus leaves.

Now, this word, paraclete, is notoriously difficult to sum up in one word. So the ESV has said helper, advocate, counselor, mediator. These are all words that the Holy Spirit can be. Jesus is leaving, and the Holy Spirit is coming. And Jesus isn't saying that he and the Holy Spirit can't be in the same room together, you know, that he has to go so that the Holy Spirit can come, that they are somehow mutually exclusive. Because, obviously, as you go through this passage, whatever Jesus has, the Spirit has.

Whatever Jesus has, the Father has given him, and the Trinity, you can see, is all involved together in this. It's not mutually exclusive. The going away of Jesus, however, is not so much a reference to the ascension, but of Jesus going to the cross. That Jesus must go to the cross. He must die.

He must be raised to life, and then he must go and sit on the throne in heaven where he will rule. Unless Jesus dies and is raised to eternal life, the Holy Spirit can't come because the work of Christ hasn't been done. For that reason, it is good that Jesus leaves. Then Jesus says this helper will provide the disciples with some specific help. The Holy Spirit arrives to work in every believer's heart to convict of sin, to convict of righteousness, and to convict of judgment, verse 8.

So again, asking the question, why is it good that the helper comes? Why is it advantageous to the disciples? Well, it's got to do with what the Holy Spirit will come to do. Does anyone remember an ad from a few years ago where a person on a street was asked if they were confident that their teeth were clean? It's a toothpaste ad.

And one lady, I don't know if she's an actor, probably an actor, said definitely clean. I've just brushed my teeth this morning. I'm walking to work or something along those lines. She was asked then to chew this harmless tablet, which contained a dye that would be soaked into the plaque of the teeth. To her surprise, when she smiled, you could see all the plaque that she had missed in her brushing that morning.

What under normal conditions appears to be clean, in fact, was very tarnished. In a way, Jesus says to us, the work of the Holy Spirit is similar. The Greek word here to convict of sin, righteousness, judgment, comes from the drama of the Greek courtroom. It refers to what the prosecuting attorney does when he exposes the guilt of a defendant. He exposes the guilt.

They put the defendant on the stand and begin to pile up the evidence, fact upon fact, witness upon witness, truth upon truth, slowly and irresistibly building the case so that at the end of the trial, the overwhelming evidence is guilty. The judge can do no other than to conclude to the defendant, you are guilty. So the word here to convict is almost better translated to expose, to lay bare. Now, as the Holy Spirit exposes to the world, it demonstrates its error and also the truth of God. The Holy Spirit exposes to the world its error with a reference to sin, to righteousness, and judgment.

Notice that this exposure is not primarily related to specific acts of sin, specific acts of righteousness or judgment, but as to what sin, righteousness, and judgment are. This convicting work, Jesus says, is good work because as we will see, it is gracious. Its intention is not to bring about a death sentence to the world. It's actually hoping to rescue life. It's designed to bring men and women of the world to recognise their need to turn to Jesus and thus avoid the consequences of those actions.

So we see in these three aspects that are exposed, convicted by the Holy Spirit. Firstly, the Holy Spirit will convict the world about sin. Now, probably, that's the most obvious one for us to understand there. Like the embarrassed lady in the toothpaste ad, the spirit convicts us about the true reality of our filthiness before God. The spirit will show people that they are sinners because of their unwillingness to live life according to God's law, fundamentally. And like the dye in that tablet, the spirit highlights the sin in our life.

But notice that the prime sin that Jesus highlights in verse 9 is unbelief. Regarding sin, Jesus says, because they do not believe in me. There are, we know, no greater or lesser sins in God's economy. Any sin is worthy of eternal damnation. They are, in God's sight, equally evil.

But friends, the only sin that sends you to hell is unbelief in Jesus Christ. That is the unpardonable sin: to not recognise Jesus for who he is. The Holy Spirit's exposure of sin is done in relation to this second thing he says: that the spirit will convict the world about righteousness. Now this means that the spirit will show us what it means to be truly good, what it means to be truly living a right life. At the heart of this statement is the idea that the world thinks of righteousness as being different to what God determines as righteous.

What the world thinks of righteousness is different to what God says is righteous. The natural state of the heart, in fact, is one that seeks to live rightly according to some sort of code. I think that's a true statement. The heart wants to live to codes, to certain standards. In a way, the heart seeks to live righteously, as in in right standing to a law.

But the problem is that the world's laws are often, more than likely, in conflict with God's laws. A perfect example of this today is that you can be called a righteous person in the eyes of the world. You can be declared a very good person according to the world's code if you affirm that gender is neither male nor female. What the world thinks is right is often very different to what God says is right. I mean, that's a touchstone issue, but isn't it so clear?

The Bible says God made man and woman, Genesis 1. The world says, I get to choose. Now, if you are convicted by the Holy Spirit, however, you start realising that I want to live by a different code than the code of the world. That is what Jesus is saying. You are convicted of a righteousness belonging to God, and you desire that.

You have an innate desire by the work of the spirit to live according to God's plan. And to live according to God's plan, therefore, is to live righteously, truly. We know that Jesus was the only person to have done this completely, which is why he explains in verse 9 again that this righteousness is being tied to his going to the father. Only Jesus can go to the father. None of us can go to the father based on righteousness alone.

He has lived the perfect life according to the law. But thankfully, by faith in Jesus, our lives being bound up in his righteous life causes us to have access to the father and in turn, Christ's righteous life begins infiltrating our own lives so that we have the desire and the power to live righteously. This leads us to the final conviction or exposure of the Holy Spirit. After the Spirit points out the righteousness of God, which has inevitably pointed out our sin, we become aware of our guilt before him. And the only conclusion is that we are under God's judgment.

The Holy Spirit will therefore convict the world of judgment. Again, Jesus points out, when he clarifies this in verse 9, that this judgment is linked to the ruler of this world, which is another term for Satan. The prince of this world is seeking to overthrow the true king of the universe by convincing humanity of that very same worldly standards that the world has adopted. The ruler of the world wants to skew judgments about living righteously, but the spirit will give true understanding. The spirit will give true judgment.

And ultimately, that judgment concludes that God is the only judge, that Satan is not the one who determines righteousness. And once our sin and our shortcoming in righteousness is truly revealed, only God will fairly judge each of us. And so once our sin has been exposed, once righteousness has been revealed, the only conclusion that we can ever make by ourselves is that we have fallen short of that glory. That is what the Holy Spirit will do. Convict us of sin, convict us of righteousness, convict us of judgment.

The conclusion that we have to ask is, what do we do now? If the spirit has convicted us of our sin, if it has shown us God's righteousness, if it has told us about the judgment that awaits all the world, the only thing potentially left for us is to despair. Because none of us are righteous if all of those exposures happen. But thankfully, Jesus tells us in verses 12 to 15 that there is a remedy. The spirit will guide us to this remedy.

Not only does the spirit expose our disease, but it also shines a spotlight on our treatment, namely Jesus Christ. Jesus is the substance of the spirit's ministry of exposure. Perhaps the greatest work the Holy Spirit does is to reveal and to glorify Jesus Christ in our hearts. If there is ever a hierarchy of the Spirit's greatest work, it is that: that the Holy Spirit reveals and glorifies Christ in our hearts. Jesus says there's still so much that the disciples don't know, so much that he still wants them to understand, but he says it's too overwhelming for them. It's too much to bear.

Only once Jesus returns to the throne will the spirit begin guiding them into all truth, verse 12. He won't do this, however, by speaking on his own authority, but by giving to them the very words that Jesus Christ will give him. And these words contain the content, verse 13, of the things that are to come. Many people will take this to mean that the Holy Spirit gives us understanding of the end times. That's not what it is saying.

The things that are to come: it's at least not as narrow as that. The things that are to come, remember for the disciples, is what's happening the very next day. Jesus dying on the cross. Three days later, Jesus rising from the grave. A month and a bit later, Jesus ascending to heaven.

The spirit will explain to the disciples what is to come. So, yes, certainly, you can conclude that this is an eschatological statement, a statement concerning how the story of humanity unfolds and ends. But Jesus is saying that the Holy Spirit's work will give each of us understanding of the broad sweep of God's redemption story from Adam in the paradise to the fulfilment of Christ at the cross, to the church in glory in the New Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit gives us the bird's eye perspective on what God has been doing and will be doing in the world. But, again, all of that revelation that the Holy Spirit does is centred on what Jesus is about to do.

That's why verse 14 says that the spirit is going to glorify Jesus. The spirit is going to glorify Jesus. All throughout the gospel of John, Jesus talks about his death in terms of his glorification. Flick back a couple of chapters in chapter 12. Jesus comes into Jerusalem on the donkey, and John writes down there that the prophecy of Zechariah has been fulfilled in Jesus coming in that way.

But then he adds, the Apostle John adds, his disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things have been written about him and had been done to him. Likewise, in the upper room in chapter 13, verse 31, when Jesus tells Judas to go and do what he is planning to do in betraying him. Once Judas leaves, Jesus says, now the son of man is glorified. Now the son of man is glorified. It is beginning. The glorification is at hand.

But in our passage here, the Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus. What does that mean? Well, it means that the Holy Spirit points back to what Jesus has done on the cross. What happened at the resurrection? The Holy Spirit will make the glorification of the cross a reality for you.

This is why Jesus also says that the spirit will take from what is mine and declare it to you. This word to declare is connected with the word angel. Just as the angels in the Bible announced God's work, so the Holy Spirit will make a momentous announcement that rivets our attention. This word is also tied to the Greek word for gospel, euangelion. The spirit's task is to unfold the meaning of Jesus to the world in such a way that the glory of it, the glory of this news, its infinite beauty, is brought home to the heart and mind.

This is why in the letter of Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 18, that we read this morning, the Apostle Paul can pray for the believer's eyes to be enlightened. The eyes of their heart, rather, is enlightened. How can a heart have eyes? Well, it's to do with the heart's ability to perceive, to understand. The Holy Spirit's ministry is to take the incredible truth about a saviour who has died for sin and to implant that truth into a heart.

It is to persuade you that the truth of Jesus Christ is a truth that is pertinent to you. It's a truth that although you have lived a life that in so many ways have been compromised and corrupted by what you once thought was right, you now see correctly. And this counts, therefore, for both the non-Christian and the Christian. It means that the Holy Spirit doesn't simply bring glory to Christ once when you first believe, so that, you know, the spirit glorifies Jesus, and then you believe in Jesus. No.

The spirit continually glorifies Jesus by convicting you of those things that Jesus had to go to the cross for: your sin that has been exposed, for the righteousness that you must live up to, for the judgment that awaits. Jesus is continually glorified in the Christian's heart by the spirit. But despite all of this, the wonder of the beloved spirit's work in us, friends, the wonder of that work is that instead of being crushed by his revelations, instead of being shattered by these exposures, these convictions, your heart is actually being moved to become more receptive and more joyful in the gospel. Although you are guilty and you should be fairly condemned for your transgressions, Jesus went to God the father, the true judge, and said, here I am. I have come to pay the penalty.

This is what the Holy Spirit tells us. And so when our hearts are rightly convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, God, in his infinite mercy, also sends us the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, which in other translations can simply be the comforter, to bring the comfort of the truth of Jesus. So, friend, let me ask you: has the spirit revealed the truth to you? Or to put it in its true light, have you seen your disease? Has the plaque on your soul been highlighted like the lady in the ad?

Or if you were honest, would you say that you've only looked with shallow glances over your life, upon examining yourself with the judgments of this world and not God's? Perhaps you've decided that I am doing just fine. My prayer for you is that the spirit exposes you, that he lays you bare so that you may know the true condition of your heart. But if you can feel this movement this morning of the spirit in your heart, be comforted as well. Be comforted with the knowledge that he is a busy worker, constantly tending the garden of our heart, pruning, pulling weeds, and always, always pointing us back to Christ.

This morning, Jesus has told us that there is only one way that we can see clearly. It is not found in those self-help books. It is not found in psychology. We need someone to point us to the leopards lying in the thickets. We need to see the plaque on our hearts, and we need to know the hope of the gospel.

For this reason, it was good that Jesus went away. We need the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal our disease and to guide us to the remedy. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, we thank you that we may pray to you, the third person in the Trinity, the one true God. That as real as the ministry of Jesus was here on earth, as real as the physical presence of Jesus Christ was with his disciples in that upper room, as real as the events of the cross and the resurrection, so real is the living presence of God in us today. We are not our own.

Our hearts are not ours anymore. We thank you, Lord, that you have laid us bare at one point. We thank you, Lord, that you have exposed the truth of our sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. For those of us who don't know you yet, Lord, I pray that the reality and the awfulness of our sin, the offence to a holy God, which it is, will be understood in all its terror, with all its implications for that final judgment. For those of us that don't know you, Lord, I pray that the Holy Spirit will give us a desire, a longing, parched mouths needing to taste the living waters of Jesus.

And then for those of us, Lord, that know you, remind us, God, that you're constantly working at pulling those weeds out of our heart. You're constantly refining us and pruning us. You're disciplining us. You're purifying us so that we and our faith will be like pure gold. And so, Lord, give us strength and perseverance to stand up under those trials, to humbly pick ourselves up again when we have failed, to not lose hope in our battle against sin, and to give us the hope that the good work that you have started, you will complete in us.

And so, Lord, bind us to that vision for our lives so that we may hold on to that with hope, with perseverance, with strength. Thank you, comforter, that you are with us to seal these words into our hearts, that our grip of these things is not dependent on what we understand now and what we might forget tomorrow. You are the one that will guide us into all truth. Your word is truth, and Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And so it is in His name that we pray.

Amen. Thanks, Brendan and Malinda.