I'll be preaching this morning
from the book of John chapter 16. And my text is really just one verse,
verse 9. But in the context, we're talking
about Holy Spirit conviction. The Lord teaching His disciples
here in the upper room, just prior to His arrest, His suffering,
ultimately his death, his burial, his resurrection. And he tells
them that his going away, his redemptive work on the cross,
his dying for the sins of his people, his establishing righteousness
for his people is a necessity to establish the one and only
ground of salvation. There is no other ground. There
is no other way. Christ was set up from everlasting
as the surety and substitute of his people, having our sins
charged, accounted, imputed to him, and for which he came in
the fullness of the time, made of a woman, his incarnation,
God in human flesh, made under the law, responsible, accountable
to keep the law for his people, to redeem them that were under
the law. And he tells them that if this doesn't happen, there'll
be no comforter, verse seven. There'll be no Holy Spirit who
is the comforter in this sense. He is an advocate. Now Christ
is called our advocate, but in a different way. He's our advocate
in the sense that he defends us from any accusation of sin
We who are His people now, we who believe in Him. He defends
us from any accusation of sin on the basis of the blood that
He shed on Calvary. When Satan accuses, when the
world accuses, and even when our own heart accuses, Christ
steps in as our advocate and pleads His righteousness imputed
to us. And that stops all accusations. We can say with Paul, who can
lay anything to our charge? The charge of God's elect, it's
God that justify. Who can condemn us is Christ
that died. But the Holy Spirit is a comforter
in another way, an advocate in another way. In that sense, he
is the, as one old writer said, the great applicator of the,
of the message and the power and the grace of God to us in
the preaching of the gospel to bring us to conviction. And he
says he's going to convict us of three things here. Verse eight,
when he has come, he will reprove or convict the world of sin,
the world of God's people now, of sin and of righteousness and
of judgment. And I've been dealing with that,
how the work of the Holy Spirit in us is the result, the fruit,
the effect of Christ's work for us. The work of the Holy Spirit
is not a work that makes us righteous before God. That's the work of
Christ on the cross. But the work of the Holy Spirit
is to bring us to conviction in the new birth through the
power of the gospel of these three things. Verse nine, of
sin because they believe not on me. Now that's what I want
to major on today. The truth about sin, the biblical
truth about sin. And then verse 10 of righteousness
because I go to my father and you see me no more. And then
verse 11 of judgment because the prince of this world is judged.
God's people, God's true children, true believers, true Christians
are those who know something about the the truth about sin,
the truth about righteousness, the truth about judgment. And
let me say this, these three aspects of Holy Spirit conviction
come together under the preaching of the gospel of God's grace
in Christ. They don't come separately. It's
not like one day you're convicted of sin and then later on convicted
of righteousness and then later on convicted of judgment. They
come together under the preaching of the gospel. But there's so
much to say in the scripture about each one of them that I've
chosen to deal with them separately in that sense. The truth about
sin, you know, one of the most popular television preachers
of today was asked by a TV reporter why he never preaches, why this
preacher never preaches about sin. And he's one of those whose
message is mainly the health and wealth gospel, the power
of positive thinking, and he never preaches in a way that
exposes the real sinfulness of man. His message is one of you've
got to buckle up and realize your full potential. The message
of the Bible when it comes to human nature is that thank God
we don't reach our full potential. Because if we would reach our
full potential in sin, this would be one heck of a world to live
in. It would be mass confusion and
other things. But anyway, the reporter asked
this preacher, he said, why don't you ever preach about sin? And
he said, well, why would I want to preach about something that's
so negative? And yet, the scripture tells
us that one of the things that the Holy Spirit does in the new
birth, and regenerating, giving the new heart, the new spirit,
new life, is convicted of sin. Now to convict here, you might
see in your concordance means to convince. So the Holy Spirit
in convicting us of sin convinces us of something that we're not
convinced of before. Now think about this. Man by
nature has some idea or some notion that he's a sinner. I
mean, you know, most people, there are very few people that
you'll ever run into who will not admit that they're not perfect. They will probably say, well,
at least they'll say, well, I've made some mistakes, and that's
really the kind of a hidden place now that people stash sin, well,
I've made some mistakes. Politicians are great for that,
you know, when they break the law. Well, I made some mistakes.
Yeah, you made some mistakes. You broke the law, buddy. That's
what you've done. But it's more than just a mistake. It's like
something they couldn't control, couldn't help. But man by nature
does not have any idea of how serious the sin problem is and
how deep it runs within his soul. Doesn't know. And he has no idea
by nature of how the true and living God has to deal with sin.
That's why people today cannot accept any notion of a God who
hates. God who hates? I told you about
the sign outside of a Methodist church that I saw up in Huntington,
West Virginia. It said, that God who hates,
we don't worship him. Well, then they don't worship
the God of the Bible. And of course, you know the problem
is twofold. Number one, man sees God's hatred
as his own. Well, God's hatred is not like
our hatred. Let me explain God's hatred to you. I'm not going
to go into all this, but it's his justice. God must punish
sin. God's hatred against sin and
sinners is just like the state who punishes the criminal who
deserves capital punishment. It's not an emotional thing.
It's not a selfish thing. It's justice. God must punish
sin. He told Adam, in the day that
you eat thereof, you shall surely die. When you sin, sin demands
death. It's not like our hatred. Our
hatred is sinful because we're selfish, we're sinners. It's
self-centered hatred. But God's hatred is not like
that. God must punish sin. And so that's what I'm saying,
that man by nature didn't really, he has no idea of how the true
and living God must deal with sin. And then the second problem
with that notion of God's hatred is man doesn't think he deserves
it. I don't deserve God's, yes we do. If God would give any
of us what we deserve or what we've earned, it would be his
hatred, his just hatred. It would only be right. If God
were to give any of us what we deserve or what we earn, it would
only be right for God to hate us. And yet the scripture talks
about the love of God which passes understanding. And that's what
we preach when we preach the gospel of God's grace, but His
love is in Christ. His love is for his people in
Christ. And that's another thing man
has no idea. By nature man has no idea of
how God must deal with sin and how God saves from sin, the only
remedy from sin. Fallen sinful man's ideas on
this subject is displayed early on with Adam. Remember it says
in Genesis 3 and verse 7 that after Adam fell, he and Eve,
the eyes of them both were open and they knew that they were
naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves
aprons. They were covering their shame. And nakedness in the Bible
is a symbol of being exposed to the wrath of God. It's a symbol
of having no righteousness. So it symbolizes actually that
if God, as I said, were to give me what I deserve or what I earn,
it'd be his hatred, his wrath, his justice against sin. And
then it continues on in the example of Cain and Abel. Remember Cain.
It says in Genesis 4.3, in the process of time it came to pass
that Cain brought the fruit of the ground, an offering unto
the Lord. Well, God had forbidden that. He didn't say bring the
fruit of the ground. He established Back in Genesis
chapter 3, that blood has to be shed. Salvation from sin can
only come through a God-appointed, able, willing sacrifice, substitute,
surety. And of course, that was pictured
in the sacrifice of a lamb, but pictured the ultimate lamb, the
Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. My only hope to be saved from
sin, your only hope to be saved from sin is Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. God must express His justice,
His wrath, His hatred for sin because He's God. We see man's
understanding of himself and of sin again in Genesis 11 with
the Tower of Babel. Remember that. Here's what they
said in Genesis 11, 4. They said, Go to, let us build
us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let
us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face
of the whole earth. You see that? We'll make a name
for ourselves by working our way to God. That's what it is. You know, the history of sinful
man and natural religion is summarized by these statements. Think about
this, salvation by the works or the will of man. Salvation conditioned on the
sinner. Self-righteous religion is a
testimony that natural man knows something of the fact that he's
not perfect, even a sinner. And those who claim to be Christian,
they'll often quote Romans 3.23, you read it. For all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. And then they'll even quote
this, Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death, but the gift
of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. But by
nature, man really does not know the truth about sin. What sin
really is, what sin really deserves, how it's measured. I mentioned
this in the Bible study hour earlier. about a man who claimed
to be a Christian. And he made this statement. He
said, I know I'm not perfect, but I've never done anything
bad enough to deserve hell. But he hadn't been convinced
of sin. Hasn't been convinced of sin. And listen to what the
Holy Spirit through the Lord by the Holy Spirit here in recording
of scripture says about sin. The Holy Spirit, Christ says
is going to come and he's going to convict. He's going to convince.
And the first thing he mentions, verse nine, of sin, he's gonna
convict of sin. And listen to what he adds, because
they believe not on me. Now, that certainly would tell
us in some ways that the greatest sin is unbelief. Unbelief is
the root of all sin. But it doesn't stop there. What
it's saying here is this, what our Lord is saying is this, that
without Christ, without being washed in His blood and clothed
in His righteousness, evidenced by faith in Him, everything I
do before a holy God is sin. Now think about that. That's
what the Holy Spirit convicts us of. Without Christ, I have
no remedy for sin. Without Christ, I have no cure
for the disease. Without Christ, I have no righteousness
before God. You read it, there's none righteous,
no, not one. Well, wait a minute, wait a minute,
wait a minute. What about brother so-and-so,
or pastor so-and-so, or saint so-and-so? By nature, they have
no righteousness before God. But look what they did. Look
at what that grandmother did for her grandchild. Look at what
that father did for his children. What does the Bible say? Are
those things bad of themselves? No. No. Christ said there's no
greater love than a man will give his life for his brother.
But He didn't say giving your life for your brother will make
you righteous. He did not say that giving your life for your
brother will wash away all your sins. You've heard of Mahatma Gandhi,
patron saint of India, who was a Hindu. During the time when
they were having civil war in India, there was a Hindu man
who came to Gandhi in complete, utter despair. This Hindu man
was crying. And Gandhi said, what is wrong
with you? And the man said, well, there's no hope of salvation
for me, he said. And Gandhi said, well, what did
you do that was so bad? And the man said, well, I killed
a Muslim husband and wife and left their child an orphan. And
Gandhi said, well, now hold it. He said, there is salvation for
you. And the man said, how? And he said, you go find that
child and you make him your own and raise him as a Muslim. And
there'll be salvation for you. Now, wouldn't it be a noble thing
for that man to go get that child, make that child his own, love
him like his own, raise him in a religion that's opposite of
what he believed? That would be so noble. We admire
that. That's honorable among men, but
I'm gonna tell you something it won't do. It will not wash
away sin. Tell you something it won't do.
It will not make that man righteous before God. And to plead that or any part
of it as his righteousness is a denial of Jesus Christ. Think about that. Without Christ,
the highest and noblest efforts of man to work his way to God
are sin in the eyes of God. That's what the Bible teaches. Now, people will hear that and
say, well, that can't be true. Well, I'll tell you what is true.
That's what the Bible teaches. Now, whether you believe it or
not, that's what this book teaches. If you claim to believe this
book, that's what it teaches. Think about this, number one,
the truth about the nature of sin, the nature of sin. Now, sin, everything, you know,
if you, and I've done this, you go through the New Testament
alone, study the word sin. In every translation, every Greek
word, all of that, And they're basically, they're five Greek
words used in the New Testament to describe sin and our sinfulness
in Adam and in ourselves. A sinner is one who commits sin. That's what the Bible teaches.
A sinner is one who commits sin. You know, when people go around
saying Christ was made a sinner, then you'd have to say Christ
was made one who commits sin, because that's what it is. But
he wasn't made a sinner. He was made sin, that means something
else. But if you look at every Greek
word that's translated sin, the most common word is the word
right here in verse nine, of sin. It's the same word when
it says the wages of sin is death. It's the same word that says
we've all sinned in the past tense and come short of the glory
of God. And what it means, and it's translated sin, it's translated
sinful, it's translated offense. You've heard the word offense?
Offense or offense? And what it means is it's to
miss the mark. That's what it means. It's to miss the target,
you might say. It means to fall short. That's
why he said, we've all sinned and what? Come short of the glory
of God. It's a failure to meet God's
standard of righteousness and holiness. It's a failure to meet
God's requirement. Now, what is the standard? What
is the requirement? Well, if you believe what the
Bible says about the nature of sin, here's what it is. Sin must
be measured by the righteousness of the law as seen in the obedience
of Jesus Christ. I quote this all the time, Acts
1731, where Paul's standing on Mars Hill and he's preaching
to the Greek philosophers and the religious debaters, and he
talks about the God that they don't know, and he talks about
the God of creation, he talks about the God who is in control
of everything, in Him we live and move and have our being,
and he brings it down to this point that God, that same God,
has commanded all men everywhere to repent And here's where the
issue of repentance comes in, Acts 17 31. To repent because
God has appointed a day in the which he will judge the world
in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained in that
he hath given assurance unto all men and that he had raised
him from the dead. What does that tell me? It tells
me that If my righteousness doesn't measure up equal to Jesus Christ,
then I'm going to be judged condemned, guilty, sin. And you think, that's what it
means. Sin must be measured by Christ. That's what he's saying
here. I've sinned because they believe not on me. If I don't
believe in Christ, I have no righteousness. All I have is
sin, even my religion. Even my morality. Nothing's sinful
in those things in and of themselves, but if I don't have Christ, that's
my state before God. That's my standing before God. Another word for sin in the New
Testament is the one translated transgression. That means breaking
the law. It kind of means like, it's almost
like the same word trespass. That's another word. Step in
across the line. Go over the line drawn between
right and wrong. Go too far. Transgression, breaking the law.
What does the law say? It says, love God with all your
heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.
And whenever you hear somebody quote that, always remind them
of this. That neighbor includes your worst enemy. The one right
now who despises you and would do you the most harm. That's
the one you're required to love as yourself. Now let me tell
you what that tells you. What it tells me, I've broken
the law. I've broken the law. Now the
sheriff of Lee and Doherty County cannot come and arrest me for
anything justly. in the civil courts. But I've
still broken the law because I don't measure up. There's another
word for sin that means iniquity, unrighteousness, transgression
of the law, lawlessness. Iniquity, depart from me, you
that work iniquity, I never knew you, means it doesn't equal,
doesn't balance out. Whatever I have to recommend
me unto God, it will not equal Christ's righteousness. It will
not equal balance the scales, you see. Somebody says, well,
I hope that my good works outweigh my bad works. It won't happen. I can tell you right now, but
I've done my best. No, you haven't, but even if
you had, it wouldn't equal, wouldn't balance out. Can you honestly
say that in every endeavor of your life, from a child up, that
you've done the very best that you know you can do in every
way? Well, nobody will say that. I hope you would. But it wouldn't
balance out. You'd still be, that's the, you
remember the story of the unprofitable servant? He says, if you've done everything
that you're supposed to do, you're still an unprofitable servant.
God still didn't know you a thing. Well, there's not a human being
who can say, well, we've done everything we're supposed to
do. And then again, that word, there's
another word, trespasses, offenses, sin, fall, fault. That's another
word that's translated in the New Testament. It means to slip,
it means to stumble, to fall, to fall away. It has to do with
lacking self-control, lacking the balance that it takes to
stand up. It means being out of control.
Swept away by impulse of passion, so as to be out of control. Have
you ever had somebody just make you lose your temper on the snap
of the finger, you know, and you wished you hadn't done it?
I've done that. Oh, I shouldn't have said that.
Well, what stopped you? What made you say it? You're
out of control. I couldn't control it. And then another word in the
New Testament that's used for sin is the word debt. Every sin
we've ever committed runs up a debt to God. That's what it
means. We've defrauded God of what He is due and what He is
due is perfect honor, glory, perfect satisfaction, His law
and justice. We run up a debt. The scripture
says that in Galatians, that he that thinks he can be saved
by keeping the law, he's a what? He's a debtor to do the whole
law. Now my point in all this is to
say that listen, sin is not a substance. I can pick this book up and I
can place it from this side of the pulpit over here. I can't
do that with sin. Sin is not something that I can
pick up and take from here and put over here. Sin is not a gas, it's not a
liquid, it's not a solid. It's not something that God can
shoot into you or extract out of you. And the reason I say that, you
know, I hear preachers talking about it like that. They say,
you know, like on the subject of 2 Corinthians 5, 21, Christ
was made sin. And I've heard preachers say,
well, he was made a mass of sin. Well, sin is not a mass of anything. There's nothing, there's no word
for sin in the Old or the New Testament. There's no context
in which sin is said to be a mass of anything. It's not a mass. Fellow on the internet asked
the question, how was Adam's sin transferred to us? There was a popular preacher
back in the 50s who wrote a book about it and he said it was through
the blood. Well, sin is not a germ or an amoeba or a cellular structure
that can be passed from my blood to yours. You know, that's why
some people in religion won't get blood transfusions. You can't
pass sin from the blood. It's not breathed in the air.
It's not something you can examine under a microscope. Sin is missing
the mark, not measuring up, crossing the line, you see, owing a debt. That's what sin is. I heard a
preacher say that Christ on the cross, he became a mass of corruption. Well, if you're talking about
the wounds, and the blood, and the sores, and all of that, that's
not sin. That's the result of sin. That's
the punishment for sin. And it had to be unto death. But corruption is not a mass
of anything. The corruption of sin, let me
tell you what the corruption of sin is. It's in the heart.
It's evil thoughts. evil motives, evil goals. Anything that we think, say,
or do that doesn't glorify and honor God is sin. That's what
sin is. Spiritual death, think about
spiritual death. Spiritual death is not that when you're born
it's passed through the seed or through the blood. Spiritual
death is this, it's the absence of spiritual life, you're born
dead. You don't have spiritual life. That's why we must be born
again. That's why we have to be convinced of sin. You've got
to be given eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart and mind to
understand and know the things of God, to know what sin is,
to know what righteousness is and where righteousness is to
be found. When Christ was made sin, how
was he made sin? He wasn't made one who commits
sin, He never committed sin. Even in His death on the cross,
He wasn't committing sin, He was obeying the Father. He said,
I go to do the will of my Father. He wasn't made a sinner in any
way, shape, form or fashion. Sin misses the mark. How was
Christ, and that word for sin in 2 Corinthians, He was made
sin, that's the same word here, Missing the mark. How was Christ
made to miss the mark? There's only one way the context
tells you, the whole Bible tells you. It was by the imputation
of sin to him. The debt was laid to his account.
He became responsible and accountable for my debt of sin. My debt became
his. And he paid it in full. He didn't
miss the mark. He didn't fall short. He was keeping and doing the
will of his father perfectly, and out of that came the righteousness
which is imputed to me. That's the true nature of sin.
You know, Christ taught that in Matthew chapter nine. You
read Matthew chapter 19. You know what people think? By
nature, we think sin is in things. Somebody holds up a glass of
wine. They say, oh, don't drink that. There's sin in that. No,
there's not. And Christ said it, he said,
it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, it's what
comes out of what? The heart. That's sin. All of that. And then there's
the truth about depravity. Look over back where Brother
Randy read in Romans chapter three. The truth about depravity. Here's the issue of sin. The truth about the nature of
sin. Sin's not in things. Sin's not in substance. There's
nothing outside of you that'll make you sin. Sin's within the
heart. It's a heart matter. I'll never
forget one time when I first moved down here back in 1985,
a fella told me that he'd been to a religious seminar where
the fella told him to go and purge their home, get rid of
anything that he can see that will cause him to sin. And I
told him, I said, well you might as well go home and cut your
own throat. Because the problem of sin in
your home is not in those things. It's in us. Man brought sin into
the world. The world didn't bring sin into
man, you see. That's the true nature of sin. And then what about depravity?
The total depravity of man. We believe the total depravity
of man. I'll tell you exactly why we believe that. Because
the Bible teaches it. The total depravity of man, when
we say that term, as I've said it before, it doesn't mean that
every person is as bad as they could be. That's just not true. God has a restraining hand upon
the human race. Some he lets go farther than
others. We all have the potential to do anything. But here's total depravity. Look
at Romans 3.10. As it is written, there's none righteous, no, not
one. We don't have righteousness. We're born without it. We fell
in Adam. We're ruined by the fall. And then look at verse 20 of
Romans three. Therefore, by the deeds of the
law shall no flesh be justified in his sight for by the law is
the knowledge of sin. We can't work a righteousness.
We don't have, we start, we don't have it and we can't work it.
Now go work hard, but you won't do it. Why? Because you're a sinner. You
say, well, that offends me. Well, it doesn't mean because
I tell you what Christ Jesus came into the world to save.
sinners. And that's me. Now you can't have it, you don't
have it, you can't work it. But here's the next part, go
back up to verse 11. There's none that understandeth, there's
none that seeketh after God. They're all gone out of the way,
they're all together become unprofitable, there's none that doeth good,
no not one. We don't want righteousness God's way. That's spiritual death. We want it our way. We want it
Cain's way. Man by nature wants to be righteous. He wants to be saved. He wants
to go to heaven. But he wants to go his way, not
God's way. Because man's way gives man some
glory. Gives him something to boast
about. But God's way gives man no glory and gives Christ all
the glory. God forbid that I should glory.
Save in what? The cross. what Christ did to
establish the only righteousness whereby God can justify me a
sinner. That's the truth about depravity. And then thirdly, the truth about
conviction of sin. Now let me show you one scripture
and I'll hurry here. Look over at Romans chapter seven. Here is a great example. of what
the Holy Spirit does when he convicts us of sin in light of
Christ because we believe not on him. Here's Paul the Apostle
is explaining this by the power of the Holy Spirit and he's talking
about how a sinner cannot be saved, justified, made righteous
or cleansed by works of the law. And then he'd answered the question
back in chapter five, well, why did God give the law? Well, he
says that the law entered that sin might abound. In other words,
God gave the law as a measure by which we could see our sinfulness. and the inability of making ourselves
righteous, and that the only way that we can be saved, made
righteous, is by his grace in Christ. And so verse seven, look
at Romans 7 and verse eight, it says, what shall we say then?
Is the law sin? Is there anything wrong with
the law? No. He says, God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but
by the law, I wouldn't have known how much of a sinner I was, except
God showed me the reality of his law by the Holy Spirit. That's
being convinced of sin. He said, for I had not known
lust, except the law had said thou shalt not covet. What he's
talking about is sin reaches the heart. In other words, it's
not just sinful to commit adultery, it's sinful to lust. You remember
Christ taught that in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and
7. He said, you've heard it said
by them of old that you shall not kill. It's a sin to kill,
to murder. He said, but I say unto you,
it's a sinful to desire for someone to be killed, to be murdered.
Even in anger. Sin is a heart matter. And he
says in verse 8, look at Romans 7 verse 8, But sin, taking occasion
by the commandment, worked in me all manner of concupiscence.
We don't use that word much today, but it means lust, unlawful desire.
For without the law, sin was dead. In other words, when I
didn't understand the reality of the law, I thought I wasn't
a sinner. I thought sin was dead. I'm righteous,
I'm holy. And he says in verse nine, for
I was alive without the law once. I thought I was living spiritually,
living for God when I didn't know the law. He says, but when
the commandment came, when God the Holy Spirit showed me the
law in its reality and what God requires and what righteousness
really is, he says, sin revived. I saw myself as a great sinner
and I died. I saw that the law condemned
me to death. In verse 10, and the commandment
which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. The commandment
was ordained to life. Do and live. What the law says,
but it also says disobey and what? Die. I'm a disobedient
one. Verse 11, for sin taking occasion
by the commandment deceived me and by it slew me. I was deceived
about myself. I was deceived about my sin.
I was deceived about what righteousness really is and where it's to be
found. And he says in verse 12, wherefore the law is holy and
the commandment holy and just and good. Now, where did it take me? It drove me to Christ. To see
that His blood alone can wash away my sins. that his righteousness
alone imputed to me can justify me before God. And my friend,
that's a sinner who's been convinced of sin knows that his only hope
of salvation is the sovereign grace of Almighty God based on
the righteousness of Christ freely imputed to him. If you don't see that, if you
look elsewhere, you haven't been convinced of sin. Isn't that
right?