If you'll turn back with me now
to John chapter 16. In John chapter 16, our Lord
comforts His disciples before going to the cross. That band of soldiers and that
mob from the high priest had not yet come to drag Him out
of the garden of Gethsemane. That one who was the devil incarnate, Judas, had
not yet betrayed Him. And He was talking to them about
His going away, and they did not understand at all what He
was talking about. None of these things had yet
taken place. was about to make his high priestly
prayer in John 17, but here in 16, he begins to comfort his
disciples concerning his dying on the cross and his leaving
this world. Jesus of Nazareth is God come
into the flesh. Do you believe that? This is God Almighty in the person
of a man. The Word made flesh who dwelt
among us, John said, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. begotten
of the Father through the womb of a virgin, being in the form
of God, Paul said. He thought it not robbery to
be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon
him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. Jesus of Nazareth is both the
Son of God and He is the Son of Man. A miracle, absolute miracle
of divine purpose, the Son of God took to Himself the seed
of Abraham. The Scripture said He took not
on Him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of
Abraham. The chosen seed, the seed to
whom the promises were made. And He become flesh of our flesh
and bone of our bone, permanent. Permanently. He wasn't a man
for a little while. He wasn't a man who suffered
and died and then went back in spirit into heaven. A man rose
from the grave. And a man stepped on that cloud
with those angels. And a man is seated in glory. Why must the Son of God be made
flesh? Why must the Son of God take
upon Him the form of men? Why must He be made bone of our
bones and flesh of our flesh? What did He accomplish as a man
that He could not accomplish as the invisible God? You ever
ask yourself that? Why did He come? Why did He come? Do you know that nearly everything
that religion calls salvation could have been accomplished
without the incarnation of Christ? It could have been accomplished
from glory. He never had to become a man
to do any of the things that religion calls salvation. They
preach a forgiveness of sin which is born of some passion in God,
and He looks on men and He feels sorry for them, and He forgives
them. And He said, now you go your way, but don't do that again.
And away they go. And He erases their past sin,
but He's still got His eye on them. If that were true, God would
not have to become a man. He wouldn't have to take to Himself
human flesh and come into this world if forgiveness is no more
than a passion in God. You see what I'm saying? Why
did He have to become a man? Why did Jesus Christ have to
be born of a virgin, born under the law? Why is that so necessary? Religion preaches of forgiveness
which is born of a passion in God. And then they preach a salvation
where men take the first step and God takes the rest. But if
man can take one step, he can take two. If he can take two, he can take
four. Fact is, if he can take one step,
he can walk the whole way. But man can't take the first
step because man's dead. He's dead in trespasses and sin.
Religion preaches the salvation of reformation, men and women
turning over new leaves, deciding to walk with God, exercising
their will to serve God rather than themselves. But that doesn't
necessitate an incarnation. That just takes inspiration. And thousands are being inspired
by preachers in the pulpits all over this country to turn over
new leaves, to change their lives, to quit doing what they're doing,
quit being an alcoholic, and be somebody who's not an alcoholic.
Quit being this and come over here and be this. That doesn't
necessitate God becoming flesh. Why must God become flesh? Why must the Word be made flesh
and dwell among us? Religion preaches an inward work
of God and an experience of supernatural origin, being empowered to serve
and pray and love. But God wouldn't have to become
a man to do that. Jesus Christ, the Scripture said,
was made of a woman, made under the law, and He did that to redeem
them that were under the law. His coming was as a representative. As Adam was the federal head
and representative of all mankind, Jesus Christ is the head and
representative of all His people. As in Adam all die, even so in
Christ shall all be made alive. As by the offense of one, judgment
came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness
of one, the free gift came upon many. As by one man's disobedience
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many
be made righteous." He's a representative man. And as sin has reigned unto
death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ. His perfect spotless obedience
is our righteousness, and His sufferings and death are atoned
Listen to the Scriptures. And you that were sometime alienated
and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled. How did He do that? In the body
of His flesh through death to present you faultless, blameless
before the presence of God's glory. Now you think about that. In the volume of this book, he
said, it's written of me, I came to do thy will, O God. He said,
in sacrifice and offerings thou hast had no pleasure, but a body
thou hast made me. A body. A sacrificial body. A representative body. Once in the end of the world
hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And having accomplished this
work, He must now ascend unto the Father, where He must reign
until all enemies be made under His feet. And the Son of Man
had been with these men for three and a half years, and He taught
them, and He protected them, and He fed them, and He comforted
them. But now he must go and die. And they didn't understand
that. They didn't understand that he
would be whipped beyond recognition, that his flesh would be plowed
from his back, that you'd look on him on the cross and you'd
see the swelling, bloody mass that you couldn't even recognize.
That he'd hang up there with spittle dripping from his face
and the high priest slapping his face. They had no vision
of this whatsoever. He must go and die this awful
death and his cold, bloody, marred body must be washed then and
perfumed and wrapped in white and clean linen. And he must
be carried down and put in a hollowed out grave. And there watch as
the soldiers roll a huge stone up over the front of him. And
there he lay. And to say the least, these men
were troubled. And as He comforted them, He
began to tell them about the Comforter. He told them about
His love. He told them that He was the
vine. He told them that He was the
bread. He comforted them. And then He
began here in chapter 16 to tell them about the Comforter. The whole concept of the coming
Redeemer had completely escaped them. And they were still, for the
most part, ignorant of why He came. Ignorant of His resurrection. Ignorant of His enthroned office
in glory. And so our Lord said to them
in John 16, verse 7, Nevertheless, He said, 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'll send
him to you. And when he's come, he'll reprove
the world of sin, not just the Jewish nation, but members of
every tribe and tongue and nation under heaven. I will reprove the world of sin
and of righteousness and of judgment Of sin, because they believe
not on Me. And of righteousness, because
I go to the Father and you see Me no more. And of judgment,
because the Prince of this world is judged. And here in verses
9 through 11, our Lord gives us a threefold work of the Holy
Spirit of God. He tells us when the Holy Spirit
has come. That's what I titled the message. When He has come. when He has
come. And He tells us this threefold
work of the Holy Spirit when He has come. And how through
this work, He will comfort the hearts of His disciples. Now
let's look at these things one at a time. First of all, the
Holy Spirit of God, He says when He has come, will convince. That word there, reprove, is
convince. Convince. He will convince of
sin. Of sin. Where there is no convincing
of sin... Are you listening to me? I'm
not trying to put you to sleep. I know I've given you a lot of
information. Just try to stick with me here for just a minute.
Where there is no convincing of sin, there is no presence
of the Holy Spirit. I don't care what they do. I
don't care what kind of language they talk in. I don't care how
miraculous a change of life they've experienced. Where there is no
convincing of sin, there is no presence or evidence of any presence
of the Holy Spirit of God. I don't care what a man professes.
I don't care how much emotion he can muster. I don't care how
sincere that he is. When God the Holy Spirit comes,
his first work is to convince of sin. Satan's a powerful enemy. He's
sly. He appears as an angel of light.
And therefore, the Scripture said, it's no great thing if
his ministers also be transformed as ministers of righteousness.
Satan's chief work is in the religion of this world, spreading
his subtle lies and ungodly concepts and ways, preaching what appeals
to the flesh, bragging on men's works and persons, persuading
them to reform their lives, feeding the appetites of the flesh, and
he don't care what you believe as long as you don't acknowledge
the truth. He could care less. He don't
care if you're Catholic or Protestant. He don't care if you're a Buddhist.
He don't care. He don't care. He don't care
if you're a philosopher and you're not religious at all. He could
care less as long as you don't receive the truth. That's all
he's interested in. As long as you don't acknowledge
the truth. He don't care. You don't care what the name
is over the door as long as you miss Christ. And nowhere does
Satan work any harder to keep the sinner... Nowhere in his life does Satan
work any harder than he works at keeping the sinner from knowing
his sin. Because that's the first work
of the Holy Spirit. He don't care if you feel guilty
about stealing an apple. It's okay. Go ahead and feel
guilty about it. Feel guilty about it. But He don't want you to know
what sin is. He don't want you to know what
sin is. And He'll do everything in His considerable power to
keep you from seeing yourself as you are. When the Holy Spirit
has come, He will convince of sin. How is He going to do that?
Our Lord said, He will convince you of sin because you believe
not on Me. That's how He will convince of
sin. To believe not on Christ is to confess that you need something
else to save yourself. There's another way, there's
another thing, there's another way that I can come. But our
Lord said, I am the way. No man cometh unto the Father
but by Me. It's to say that you cannot find
in the person and work of Christ a full sufficiency. The heart
of sin is hatred, hatred for the living God. The carnal mind
is enmity against God. It's not subject to the law of
God, neither indeed can it be. And you say, as hundreds of others
have told me, now wait a minute, preacher, I don't hate God. You
don't? Then why don't you embrace His
Son? Why don't you embrace the Son
of His love? If you don't hate God, why don't
you embrace His Son? You don't embrace your son because
you hate God. Men and women won't have the
free grace of God in Christ. They won't have His election
of grace. They won't have His redemption
of grace. They won't have His gift of righteousness. They won't receive His gospel,
His messenger, or His ways. And they won't have those things
because they hate God. They like a woman spurned. She
don't care about this package. She could care less. A husband
has spurned his wife and he comes back with a package and he gives
it to her and she bats it on the ground. She don't care if
there's a diamond in there or a box of candy. She could care
less. She's mad. And you stand up and you can
preach the grace of God. And you're preaching gifts and
things beyond our wildest imagination. We don't even know what this
is, eternal life. We don't even know what these
blessings of God are. They're so immense that we can't
even take them in. And we just bat it down because
we're mad. What are we mad about? We hate
God. We hate God. Natural man hates God. He hates
the Living God, the Sovereign, Unchangeable, Eternal God. He
won't be told what to do. You can't tell me what to do.
I'm going to do what I want to do. Well, I can tell you what
you want to do. What you're wanting to do is
go to hell. Won't be told what to do. Won't
be told how to do it. Won't bow to His authority. Won't
bow to His authority, whether it's delegated or otherwise.
The heart of unbelief is hatred for God. What's so horribly wrong
with grace? Huh? Those of you who come to
know grace, you used to ask yourself, you're upset over grace. And all of a sudden, you begin
to see it. And then you start asking yourself,
well, what's so horrible about this? What's so horrible about God
giving to you eternal life? What's in that that makes men
so angry? What's so horrible about the
free grace of God? What's so awful about God showing
mercy to a condemned race by choosing to save some? What's
so horrible? What's so awful about that? What's
so terrible about a redemption that redeems? Natural man, fallen, depraved,
sinful man is anti-Christ. He's not anti-religious, he's
not anti-moral, he's anti-Christ. And all you have to do is tell
him who Christ is, tell him why Christ came, tell him where Christ
is, tell him about his authority, tell him about his... Oh, he's
upset. He's upset. Why? Because you
hate God. And no other reason for a man
or a woman to deny the Word of God, the means of the Spirit,
and the preaching of the Gospel except hatred for God. Turn with me to I Corinthians
chapter 2. I Corinthians chapter 2. Let's begin here in verse 12. Now, we have received not the
spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that
we may know the things that are freely given to us of God, which
things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth,
but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with
spiritual. But the natural man, Are you
listening? Receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God. What are these things? Well,
the first thing is the truth about who you are. Isn't it? That's the first thing
the Holy Spirit does. He convinces of sin. Of sin. But we won't receive the things
of the Spirit of God. We're not going to receive His
messenger, His message. We're not going to have any of
it. Because it's foolishness to it. And neither can you know
them because they're spiritually discerned. The heart of sin is
hatred for God, and nowhere does that hatred shine brighter than
it does in unbelief. Our Lord said in John chapter
3, everybody knows John 3.16, Nobody knows John 3, 19. He tells us in those earlier
messages, he said, he that believeth not is condemned already. Now listen to this, and this
is condemnation. That light has come into the
world and men love darkness rather than light. When the sinner refuses to embrace
the Son of God, he does three things according to the Scripture. The first thing he does is that
he trods underfoot the Son of God. Trods underfoot the Son
of God. You kids, you like chewing gum.
When you get done, take that pack out and throw it on the
ground and walk on it. Nothing in it. It doesn't mean anything
to you anymore. Just walk on it. When a man refuses to embrace
Christ, he trods underfoot the Son of God. There's nothing in
this Christ for me. The second thing it says that
he does when he won't refuse this Christ of Scripture He counts
the sanctifying blood of the covenant an unholy thing. Now those of you who attended
when we went through the book of Exodus and the book of Genesis,
you know that God prescribed the things of worship. He sanctified
those things and He said, this is how I'm going to be worshipped.
You're going to bring to me the prescribed sacrifice. And you're going to do this,
you're going to do that. These are all things. But those things
which were not ordained of God, they were unholy. They were ungodly. They were
not ordained of God. You couldn't bring those things.
They were unholy. And when he says this, you count
the sanctifying blood of the covenant, an unholy thing, he's
saying that you're counting that thing as not of God. Not ordained
of God. That gospel you preach, that's
not God's gospel. That's what you're saying. And
the third thing that He does, is He does despite. That means
He despises the Spirit of grace. He despises the Holy Spirit of
God. When the Holy Spirit's come,
He's going to convince of sin, because our Lord said, they believe
not on Me. I'll tell you this, every man
that's convinced of sin will embrace the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he won't until he is. You can't make him. You can't make Christ glorious
enough for an unregenerate man to embrace Him. You can't do
it. But let that man be convinced of his sin. And I'm telling you,
you can dangle a thread out in front of him of Christ, and he'll
grab it like it's a lifeline. He must be convinced of sin.
And then secondly, our Lord said, when he's come, when the Spirit
has come, the Comforter, he'll convince of righteousness. And
here's why. Because I go to the Father, and
you see me no more. What in the world does that mean?
That means he did what he came to do. He did what He came to do. If
He wasn't done, He wouldn't have left. I must go. Where is He going?
To the Father. Who sent Him? The Father. Had our Lord failed to do all
that the Father sent Him to do, He would not have been received
up into glory, and the Comforter would not have been sent. Jesus
Christ, our representative, wrought out a righteousness for us, making
us acceptable to God. Ephesians 1 said, To the praise
of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the
blood. Paul said, Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. Now
when, or maybe I ought to say, if the Holy Spirit of God ever
convinces you of sin, He'll have to convince you of righteousness.
Because you won't have any. All your righteousness will be
on the dung heap. They're all filthy rags. You
won't have any righteousness anymore. Listen to old Job out there on
that pile of ashes, scraping those scabs with a piece of glass.
dying. He said, who is man that he should
be just for God? He couldn't find any reason in
him. And then like Paul prayed in
Philippians chapter 3, he said, oh, he said that I might win
Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness. When the Holy Spirit convinces
us of righteousness, we cease from our works as God did from
His, and we rest in Christ. We enter into His rest. And then
thirdly, and I'll try to hurt, when the Holy Spirit is come,
He will convince of judgment. Not the judgment of this race
in Adam in the fall, and not of the future judgment, every
man's conscience tells him that's coming, but of judgment satisfied. That's what he's talking about
here. Judgment satisfied. How does the Holy Spirit of God
convince the sinner of the satisfied judgment of God? By showing him
that the prince of this world has been judged. Colossians 2.14
said, he blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against
us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing
it to His cross. And having spoiled principalities
and powers, He made a show of them, openly triumphing over
them in it. Satan has no power except the
power of deceit. And this power has reigned among
fallen men for thousands and thousands of years. reigned because
of their ignorance and the darkness of their natures. But the curse
is lifted at Calvary, and Satan's folly is fully exposed." His reign over ignorant men was
because of the judgment of God. And the end of that reign is
because of judgment satisfied. If the judgment of God were not
satisfied, there could be no gospel preached. Huh? Now, don't you think about that. There wouldn't be any gospel,
would there, without judgment satisfied? Where would the good
news be? If the judgment of God were not
satisfied, there could be no gospel proclaimed, there could
be no Holy Spirit sent, there could be no Redeemer on the throne,
and there could be no work of the Holy Spirit in the heart.
But when God comes into the heart and regenerates a man and makes
that man to see the glory of God in Christ, that's evidence
of judgment satisfied. Judgment satisfied. Otherwise,
the prince of this world still reigns. He still holds his goods
intact until that one stronger than he comes in and takes him
out of the way and spoils his goods.