Clough John Lesson 57
The
Believer and the Holy Spirit in Evangelism – John
We’ll continue with our study of Jesus
Christ’s briefing to the disciples before He died. John is the book that gives us certain things
that Jesus Christ said that were, at the time, now well understood but later
became very prophetic because they pictured the Church that later came into
existence and was adequately described by these passages. In John
In fact, the opposite is going to be the case. Horrible things are going to happen; these men are all going to die violent deaths. Some of them, like Peter, in church history have said to have been crucified upside down; others have been thrown to lions, some were cast out on an island to die slowly from exposure. And so all of these men who were sitting in that room listening to this discourse, or at this time actually they’re out in the Garden probably, as they listen to this will face tremendous pressure and violent death, all because of their identification with Christ. But nevertheless, Jesus Christ shows them exactly what’s going to happen, He says this is going to bother you, it is going to affect you but it’d better affect you now and you’d better get used to it than worrying about when it happens because when it happens you’re going to be too busy witnessing for Me, trying to explain to your persecutors the doctrines of the Word of God, trying to straighten them out and you will not have time at that point to go into shock and fail Me, so I’ll just lay it on the line the way it is and this is the way it’s going to happen to you and you’d better be prepared.
It’s one of those great passages that show you the importance of the Word of God ahead of time; taking it in while you have the freedom to do so. You may not always have that freedom; catastrophe may hit you as an individual, catastrophe may hit us as a nation. And when that happens there is going to be no free preaching of the Word of God. You may not even have your tapes; they could all be erased by electromagnetic polls. So obviously you can forget notes and you can forget tapes and you can forget electronic equipment and so on in that situation; all that you will have is the doctrine that resides in your soul; that’s it, period over and out.
So here is one of those great, great
sections where Christ reiterates again for us in the Gospel that principle. And in John
Now obviously what this passage is teaching is that the men’s response to Christ is a reflection, not on Christ at all, it is a reflection upon themselves. This is the whole point of the Gospel: Christ judges men, men do not judge Christ. If a person walks out and can’t see the sun shining it simply shows he’s blind, it doesn’t say that the sun has stopped shining. And that’s basically the argument of the Gospel. So therefore, when Christ, who is God incarnate, comes onto the scene men are going to be deflected one way or the other, depending upon their prior response to God Himself because who is Christ but God incarnate, and thus their prior response to God will then be ripped off and exposed for what it is and their response to God will be their response to Christ. That’s the condemnation.
All right, so if we have a person on
negative volition toward
God-consciousness that means they’re going to be negative to God, to God
incarnate, unless of course grace is involved in a special work. Let’s turn to Romans 1 and we’ll see that
famous passage on God-consciousness and see certain things that are contained
in every person’s God-consciousness because the passage that we are about to
study in John is one of the famous passages, Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer spent a
lot of time studying. In fact, it was
this passage among several key other ones that burdened him, eventually, to set
up and establish Dallas Seminary. Dr.
Chafer was a singer in evangelistic campaigns and he would sing and carry on
and then he’d notice the people coming down the aisle for this and for that,
all screwed up, they didn’t know what they were coming down the aisle for, just
like they still are screwed up when they come down the aisle and still do not
know why they’re there, but he saw this go on again and again and again and
again and it bothered him, it bothered his conscience, that something was
wrong, this was just not the New Testament pattern of evangelism. This was back in World War I era and so then
he began to study the Scriptures, he studied the passage we’re about to study
in John
And he set up an evangelistic campaign in this particular church one day and the pastor had gotten him there hoping for a usual week revival. So he went and taught the first night, didn’t give an invitation at the end. And this kind of raised everyone’s eyebrows. The second night came and he taught again from the Scripture and again no invitation, and about the third or fourth night the pastor called him over and said Mr. Chafer are you going to give an invitation, you know that’s customary in a revival. And Dr. Chafer said don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it. So the next night went by and he taught, still no invitation. Then the last night came and he said now as I have taught the Scriptures this week I assume that some of you have become Christians and would like to talk to me about it further and if you’d like to do that after the service is all over, just meet me in the back room. And so he closed the service and went back to the back room and it was filled. One hundred people were back in this back room, and he couldn’t believe it himself and he said are you sure you understood what you’re here for? And they said yes, and all those people had responded to the Word of God, without the gimmicks, without the invitation because he had clarified the issue, it was content that he stressed.
Now the content of the passage we’re about to study goes into three major points; one of which is going to depend for its understanding upon Romans 1. So we’re starting not in John 15 which is where it starts but in Romans 1. And in Romans 1, those of you who have been around here have gone through this passage numerous times but we’re going to go through it again. Romans 1:20, “The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen,” that means there is no such person that does not know that God exists. The question of the existence of God is never dealt with in Scripture for a very elementary reason: it’s not a question. Every person knows that God exists. Now they may be fouled up on exactly who they think He is and what He’s like but they have a basic idea of some of these divine attributes, His righteousness, His justice, His sovereignty, His omnipotence, perhaps omniscience, certainly immutability and eternality and they have a sensation that these attributes are there and men are going to take those attributes and they are going to put them onto the true God whose attributes they are or they’re going to rip those attributes off Him and put them over here on some sort of an idol. And this is why in naturalistic science when natural law is made the end all and the absolute what men have done is simply take their God-consciousness of immutability and they’ve applied it to natural law. So they do know God is there, they’re just playing games with His attributes.
And that’s what Romans
So this passage teaches us first about the men of the unbelieving world around us; they do know that God is there, they do have a sensation of His attributes and they prove it, as much as they try to deny it, they prove it by constantly deifying something. You know, it’s interesting that if God wasn’t there, if it really were a question of whether He was there, these people that say that they’re not sure whether He exists, if they were really honest with the question, why is it that they’re always turning around deifying something. It’s a most interesting procedure to watch; they claim that God isn’t there and yet they can’t breathe five minutes without holding to some portion of His character. Example: a criminal; a criminal makes a deal with another criminal and if one criminal rips off the other criminal, they’re both criminals but one rips the other one off in their little deal of criminal enterprise, they always have a sensation that one did the other wrong. Now where are they getting that sensation from? Because they’re conscious of God’s righteousness and justice, that’s why. There wasn’t any social law they violated because they were all, by definition, outside of the law. So we have this constant rise into the surface and as I said in evolution and natural science today you can’t pick up a book on life series or you go into the school science text and it’s always the origin of the universe through law, but they never ask the obvious question, where did the law come from. You know, it’s interesting, evolution proceeds by law, the origin of the universe comes by law. Oh? Then where does the law come from? That’s immutable and that’s eternal; ah, there’s the manifestation of idolatry. There’s where the God-consciousness is showing up again. Men cannot escape it, they’ll always have it somewhere in their system. Probe and push and question and discuss but sooner or later you’ll find the attributes, one’s hidden under here, another one is tucked in over here, and another one’s tucked in over there but they’re all there. They cannot be avoided, and that’s what Paul says, you cannot avoid this. You have either taken God’s character and desecrated it or you’ve bowed your knee to it.
Now the second part of Romans that we want to look at tonight is in Romans 2:15; this shows something else about the world of the unbelieving men. Not only are all men God-conscious and have a sensation of His attributes, though they suppress this and pretend it’s not to be attached to His character but rather they are just kind of autonomous qualities. In verse 15 he insists that all men have a pretty fair idea of what is right and what is wrong apart from Scripture. He said, verse 14, “The Gentiles, who have not the Scripture,” the “law” would be the Old Testament in that day, “do by nature the things contained in the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves. [15] Who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.” Their conscience bears witness. Why? Because their conscience is what is God’s image about them; that’s God image in them, the conscience. And therefore they cannot escape the moral sensation, as depraved as President Amin is, the place where the Israeli’s struck and demonstrated to the world how to handle terrorists, as depraved as he is, even he has a sense of what is right and what is wrong; he thought the Israelis did him wrong; it’s an appeal to a standard. He’s not just saying the Israelis hurt him, he’s saying something more than just that the Israelis hurt Him, he’s saying that the Israelis transgressed some standard of right and wrong and so this is what Paul says. No matter who you are, where you are, where you are, there’s always a man who has some sensation of right and wrong.
Okay, there’s the foundation for what the raw material of the unbelieving world is made out of. No matter who the unbeliever is, no matter how hard he suppresses his God-consciousness, it’s always there; it’s got to be there, just as sure as there’s got to be air in his lungs because God has made him that way, and you ought to take tactical advantage of this. No matter who it is that you are talking with, under whatever circumstances, that person has a Trojan horse in their soul that you can use—their God-consciousness. Understand that they may with their lips absolutely refuse to listen to you and shout you down, but nevertheless in their heart you just keep aiming for the target; don’t aim for their mouth, aim for their conscience; constantly pick away at their conscience, you know that’s right, you know that’s right, you know that’s right, and go right for it because you know it’s functioning. This text tells you it’s functioning.
Now we come to the passage in John 15 where Jesus briefs His disciples on how to exist, how to survive under category four suffering. Category four suffering is suffering that is caused by our identification with Christ in a fallen world. Now in John 15:26-27 we have the provisions in this world system. Christ introduces this in the context of suffering. “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceeds from the Father, he shall testify of Me: [27] And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning.”
Verse 26 is one of the several verses of the New Testament that is extremely important to prove the personality of the Holy Spirit. You know there are a lot of people walking around today, even in evangelical circles who think of the Holy Spirit as some sort of an it, sort of a vaporous blob, an aurora around God but not really a person. But if you’re a Trinitarian, an orthodox Christian, you have to hold that the Father is a person, the Son is a person, and the Holy Spirit is a person. Now how are you going to show the Holy Spirit is a person? Well you have to show that He has the characteristics of personality and one of those is right here in this verse. The Holy Spirit is often called… his name in the Greek looks like this, pneuma, and it’s a neuter noun and the critics of orthodoxy have said aha, see, neuter noun, that means the Holy Spirit is an it, He’s not a person, not a “he,” it’s an “it.” And for sure the Holy Spirit isn’t “she.”
All right, now pneuma at this point is always neuter, but here, when in the last part it says “he,” it’s ekeinos, which is a masculine singular pronoun used of the Holy Spirit. It is completely off the gender of the main noun and therefore it’s a deliberate grammatical change that the Apostle John is making here to show us that this Holy Spirit is not an “it,” it’s not a “she,” the Holy Spirit is a “He.” “He” shall do this. I leaven the fine details of the differentiation of he and she and so on to a later series. There is a point to be made there but we won’t tonight. In verse 26 the Comforter, the Holy Spirit is a personality. The Holy Spirit is not an influence. Test some of your friends sometime when you’re in conversation; ask them what they think of the Holy Spirit. Don’t tell them, by the way, what the true position is, just ask them. You’d be amazed people, born again supposedly, in Christian circles that don’t know the Holy Spirit is a person.
“When the Holy Spirit has come, whom I will send, and He “proceeds from the Father,” Jesus says. Now this is the subordination within the Trinity. We’re going to have a short series on the Trinity the end of August and we’ll deal with the subordination problem. The Father and the Son first; the Son is subordinate to the Father but not in essence; the Son is subordinate to the Father in role, not essence. He doesn’t have less attributes than the Father, He simply plays a different position on the team. Every man on the football team, this is not quite an accurate illustration for the theologically precise, but if you have a football team and you have all the men on that team, they’re all made in God’s image; one is not less human than the other. Now some of them look less human than the other, but they’re all basically human, they all basically have God’s image, but they play different roles on the team. And somebody doesn’t say oh, gee, I got a bad roll, not if he knows football and he knows the importance of that position. And so the Son doesn’t complain to the Father that He’s got this constantly subordinate role and the Holy Spirit has a role subordinate to the Son and subordinate to the Father and that dual procession it is called theologically, the procession of the Spirit, comes both from the Father and the Son. Believe it or not that was the cause of one of the great fights between the eastern and western church in the early century.
Now in verse 27 we have the witness of the believers. Now notice that the witnessing of these two verses is meshed together. The Holy Spirit does witnessing and the apostles are going to do witnessing and now we have to put these two things together so we get it correlated. They’re not two separate witnessing things. That are going on. Verse 26 and 27 are not talking about parallel lines that never meet. They’re talking about cooperative effort. The Holy Spirit is going to, Jesus says, when He is come and this new era begins, He is going to have a particular ministry toward this hostile world system outside of you. And He says, you are going to have a ministry to this hostile world system outside and around you that’s persecuting you.
Now we can use an illustration to tie verse 26 and 27, if we think of a camera and think of the fact that you have a lens system, you have a film back here and the light comes into the lens and is deployed against the film at a certain focal length. Now, as this starts you’ve got to have some object out here if you’re going to wind up with a picture that’s worth anything and back here you’re going to have to have some film that’s good and it’s going to have to be developed. So you have basically two elements, you have the content of the picture and you have the mechanics of developing the picture. Now verse 26, which gives you the role of the Holy Spirit, His job is basically providing the film and developing it in the mind of the unbeliever. Your job in your witnessing and evangelism is to provide Him with the clearest possible picture. The Holy Spirit can do His job from now until the rapture and nothing is going to happen if there’s no object out here to take a picture of; the guy is going to come up with one big blank on the film. The Holy Spirit has put Himself, this is almost a repeat of the kenosis of Christ in a way, the Holy Spirit is kenotic, He has humbled Himself to us so that His ministry is correlated with our ministry. He is going to work, of course we perform our ministry, it’s not autonomous, but He has worked it out so under His leadership we are given a role to give doctrinal content, the gospel, to the unbeliever that will go past his lens onto His film and then the Holy Spirit will develop that film in due time, at the Holy Spirit’s own schedule.
Now this passage, therefore, that’s coming up is going to tell us exactly what to put in that picture. It’s going to tell us things to emphasize, and it’s going to tell us by omission things that you should not emphasize in the evangelistic process. In other words, what we have got here is one of those rare moments in Scripture where God Himself tells us, hey guys, now look, I’m going to develop the film on this guy’s soul and when I develop that film I want to see certain things in that film and it’s up to you guys to provide that content. So here we have actual directions by the Holy Spirit who develops the film in what He wants, because He’s the One who preserved Christ’s teachings here.
Before we leave the illustration we might point out that developing the object is our faith doing; developing the film is the faith rest. We do by faith, we prepare in faith, we exercise the message in faith, we try everything we can to communicate with the unbeliever; that’s all faith doing. But then there comes that point where we have to sit back and say now Lord, you’ve got to work in the person’s soul; that’s faith resting. Now don’t cut these two things in half so that first comes faith doing then faith resting. They are, in practice, synonymous often times, sometimes they’re not, sometimes they are. But don’t get an artificial view from this illustration. Oftentimes you’re trusting the Holy Spirit to work on the person while you’re looking them in the eye and trying to teach them something. Other times you look them in the eye and teach something and nothing comes back so you give up for a while and then you trust the Lord to work on them some more.
Now John 16:1-4 Jesus returns to theme of persecution. See, He’s introduced very tantalizingly in verses 26-27, the Comforter is going to come, He’s going to aid you, but before He gives us all the goods on what the Holy Spirit is going to do He’s going to just run us by one more time on category four suffering because He wants us to appreciate the Holy Spirit’s work and be grace oriented. He’s not going to say well now guys, the Holy Spirit is going to do this and He’s going to do that for you, He’s going to do this for you, well obviously somebody is going to sit there and say so what, I don’t need Him. What Christ is saying is oh yes you will, because whether you guys like it or not this is going to be almost like hell on earth for you. And notice, the witnessing that is mentioned in verse 26-27 occurs in the category four type context which therefore suggests that most witnessing that is genuine of the Holy Spirit is usually accompanied by suffering of some sort, somewhere along the line, some pressure, some adversity. Now that I’m saying as far as God is concerned. Now we can generate our little programs to knock on doors and leave a tract in the mail slot or something and come back to church and give ten points to somebody who’s done it for 40 boxes but that’s manmade evangelism; that’s not Holy Spirit directed evangelism.
John 16:2. “They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever kills you will think that he doeth God service.” That’s extreme category four persecution. [3] “And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor Me.” Jesus very clearly at this point blames it on negative volition and nothing else. [4] “But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.” Jesus is simply saying that while He was there He didn’t have to brief them on the suffering. Why? Two very clear reasons, number one, they weren’t suffering very much. How many apostles were killed before Jesus was killed? None. They were all killed after Jesus was killed. So Jesus was taking the heat while He was here, and so since He was the target of the enemies and not His followers, it meant they had less pressure when He was physically there. But He is not going to be physically there any longer and therefore the pressure and the lightening and the fire is going to come against His disciples, now alone without the physical presence of Christ.
John 16:5 is a criticism of their mental attitude, “But now I go my way to Him that sent Me; and none of you ask me, Where do I go? [6] But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart.” That is an intense criticism of believers. Christ says there’s two things wrong here. First of all, as I have told you about the coming category four suffering you have a very selfish attitude. You’ve never asked what about My suffering; just simple rudeness is the point. They are just about to watch their leader executed, and as the police right at that hour are probably coming up the hill of Gethsemane, Christ says isn’t it interesting, I’ve warned you guys about what’s going to happen and you never asked what’s going to happen to Me and it’s about to happen to Me. In other words, you are not oriented to Me. That’s one level of criticism.
But there’s a deeper criticism to this; to be grace oriented these men must be occupied with Christ. They cannot be occupied with themselves, with their own interests; if they do, it’s going to be fatal in the hour of pressure. In that hour they are going to have to have their eyes focused completely upon the risen Christ else they will fail and be scandalized. So Christ right here is upbraiding their mental attitude, training them right now, spotting a bad mental attitude, exposing it and saying wrong, right now all of you men are shaking, all of you men are scared, all of you men are asking, well I think I might go back to my business and Peter did, and some of the others did, because I’ve left my business and I’ve gone into this Messianic movement thing and now the Messiah, it turns out He’s going to get crucified, some big Messiah that was. And this is on their mind, and the other thing that’s on their mind about being excluded from the synagogue, that means excluded from the center of Jewish society, that means being looked down upon as a heretic. That’s a tremendous social price that they are going to have to pay and so naturally they are thinking about their own welfare and Christ is saying that’s not the issue.
Now we come to that great passage, John 16:7-11 in which He tells us exactly what to emphasize in personal evangelism. “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.” Clearly you have the giving of the Holy Spirit contingent upon a fact of history, sequence of cause/effect, real sequence of cause/effect in history. History is not meaningless. If Christ did not do what He was supposed to do the whole plan of salvation would cave in. His acts are significant. [8] “And when He is come, He will reprove the world of” three things, “sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: [9] Of sin, because they believe not on Me; [10] Of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more; [11] Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.”
Now the Holy Spirit today, He’s a person, He’s working with the Church, the body of Christ. He has been given a set of orders from His superior, who is God the Son, and right here you have the three things in those orders. You don’t have to have a written sheet and say hey, I wonder what the Son has told the Holy Spirit to do, I wonder what the orders read. This is the order, right here. He tells us exactly what He has told the Holy Spirit. So right here you have the tactical plan for the entire Church Age.
Right here you have the emphases of the Holy Spirit and you will notice strange things missing. It does not say in verses 9-11 anything about speaking in tongues; that is not a central issue of the Holy Spirit’s work. You do not read in verse 9, 10, 11 of the Holy Spirit and healing. That is not a major issue during the Church Age. You do not read in verses 9-11 of some of the other idiotic things, like lengthening somebody’s leg and being slain in the Spirit and falling backwards into a bathtub filled with hot water so it’ll make your tongue relax and you can go blah, blah, blah better and this kind of stuff. That is not what the Holy Spirit is emphasizing. Now let’s get real, these weirdoes in the neo-charismatic movement rip off the Holy Spirit’s orders. These are the orders, here’s where the emphasis is, you do not have to walk out of here tonight and say gee, I don’t know whether that’s true or not. It’s the Word.
Clearly three things the Holy Spirit will emphasize to the unbeliever and these three things are ways to spot where the Holy Spirit is working. Just look for wherever these three things are being emphasized and you can dogmatically and emphatically say there is a work of the Spirit; that is not a work of the Spirit, that is not a work of the Spirit, that is a work of the Spirit, that is not a work of the Spirit and you can go through and you can diagnose it by simply watching the effects, what is happening and what is not happening, all going back to this passage.
Now let’s look at the verb in John 16:8, “He will reprove.” This is the word that was used in a law court for conviction, or we would say convince. It means to prove beyond reasonable doubt in the ancient jurisprudence. That’s the technical usage of this verb. It most frequently used in the jurisprudence type situation. If it is used in verse 8 it obviously must be telling us that the Holy Spirit is going to be interested in proving beyond the shadow of a doubt to the conscience of the unbelieving man these three items. Now let’s look at each of these three items. These are the things the Holy Spirit is telling us. Remember before we go any further, verse 26-27 is a sandwich; verse 26 I said was the work of developing the film, verse 27 was the things that the Holy Spirit wants in His picture, what He wants us to do. Now if He’s there developing the film, and again using our picture of the camera with the lens and the film in the camera and we have these three things coming in on that film, the Holy Spirit is looking to develop the issue of sin, He’s looking to develop the issue of righteousness, He’s looking to develop the issue of judgment.
That’s what the chemicals are for, that’s why they’re deployed against the film. That’s what He’s looking for, something to come in through the eyes and through the mind of the unbeliever onto his conscience that He can use. And He not going to use a lot of garbage that comes in here; oh, since I accepted Christ I have such a glow in my heart, and blah, blah, blah. And that comes in; the Holy Spirit is not going to develop that; that’s not where He’s interested. Oh, since I became a Christian I speak in tongues, I’ve had the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I loooovvve Jesus and all the rest of it. That garbage isn’t going to be emphasized by the Holy Spirit, only these three things. If the thing is not listed in verse 9, 10 and 11 it the Holy Spirit doesn’t even bother with it. It’s just a lot of hot air and it’s a waste of time; so you can save everyone a lot of grief and a lot of time and a lot of effort if, when you witness, you’ll emphasize these areas. It doesn’t mean mechanically you have to deal with all three of them separately; sometimes you can bring them all together, but this is the center of the emphasis of the Spirit.
Let’s take the first one, “Of sin because
they believe not on Me.” Now when Dr.
Chafer studied this he wrote in his systematic theology, Volume 3, page 218
this tremendous passage and this was an eye opener back in his day because in
his day when you had an evangelistic service they started in with the usual
booze approach, or they started with something else and it was always this
legalistic thing of majoring on minors and minoring on majors. And this was the evangelism. Usually liquor was the thing and playing baseball
on Sunday or something else, if you walked two and a half miles between
“in view of a finished work by Christ wherein sin is borne and all blessings are secured, the immeasurable failure for the individual for whom Christ has died is that he does not believe on Him. It is noticeable, through contrary to general opinion, that the Spirit does not enlighten the mind with respect to all the sins the individual has committed.” I repeat that: “It is noticeable, through contrary to general opinion, that the Spirit does not enlighten the mind with respect to all the sins the individual has committed. It is not a matter of creating shame or remorse concerning sin, nor is it so much as a reminder of sin that has been committed—though there is nothing, on the other hand, to preclude sorrow or consciousness of sin; it is rather that, since sin has been borne by Christ, the remains the one great and only responsibility of one’s attitude toward the Savior who bore the sin. This unbelief the Lord declared is the basis of final condemnation, when He said: ‘He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’”
Now what Dr. Chafer has pointed out from this verse is that the sin that is emphasized by the Holy Spirit in the Church Age is not booze, it is not something else, it’s not these particular sins; it is one them—what have you done with Jesus Christ. That is where the Holy Spirit puts the emphasis and if we are to take a clue when we present the gospel we ought to present that; that’s one of the things that comes in there, the Holy Spirit looking around on the film to see if we’ve boomed it into the soul of the unbeliever—what have you done with Christ.
Now let’s look at some passages in the book
of Acts to see whether the apostles carried out this very deal, this very
emphasis in their preaching. Turn to
Acts 2:23, again, we are asking the question, when the first Christian
evangelists went out into the world system, did they or did they not emphasize
the usual personal sin; oh, you’ve been bad people, that kind of approach. Is that the apostolic message? Acts
[Tape turns: Acts 10:42, “And He] commanded us to preach unto the people and to testify that it is He which was ordained of God to be judge of the quick and the dead, [43] To Him give all the prophets and witness, that through His name, whosoever believeth on Him should receive remission of sins.” Does it sound like he is cataloging all of Cornelius’ past? Trying to shame him, embarrass him? Not at all. He is simply carrying out the mandate of John 16; “sin, because they believe not on Me.” Sin, the essence of sin is rejection of Christ. These sins are emphasized therefore, it’s not saying that these people haven’t sinned, it’s just saying that the thing to emphasize is the clearest sin. And what’s the clearest sin? Rebellion against Christ, that’s the clearest sin.
Acts
Now sometimes this involves a lot of preparation, a lot of background, the people with a God-consciousness, we know from Romans 1 and that’s why we started there tonight, they have a God-consciousness of God’s attributes so we know… at least most of the attributes are conscious, they know of their sins, they’re there, and you have to draw upon this as a basis for emphasizing the sin, the cruciality of deciding for or against Jesus Christ. That’s the issue, because Christ is God incarnate, He is not going to reveal Himself any more in history with all due apologies to Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, Bahiullah, and a few of the other half dozen idiots who have tried to mimic and add to and supplement the ministry of Christ. Christ is the highest revelation. There is no room left to plead ignorance any more; therefore your response to Christ is your response to God. All right that is the issue of sin; sin primarily the sin of rejection of Christ.
Now two applications at this point. We emphasize the nature of sin in our generation as against God, not against society. Psalm 51:4 is a good verse for this. Our society has a humanistic idea of sin. And it’s on everyone’s mind, it’s in the newspaper, it’s in all your writings, all your thinkers, sin, if it’s thought of is thought of as social hurt. That’s what’s being labeled as sin in our generation. That’s wrong. You can’t afford to have somebody feel guilty about the fact that they ran down a hotten-tot on the left side of Route 66 some place. That was a wrong, a social wrong, but that is not the sin. The sin was that that person was made in God’s image and you violated God’s rule. God protected that person. That’s why David says, though he committed the sin of murder and adultery, “Father, I have committed sin against You and You only.” Sin is only against the law, nature and the law-giver, not against the victim. And this is a tremendous thing you have to correct, so while we’re stressing this point of sin, you’ll have to stress time and time again that sin is against the character of God. That’s the nature of sin. And then on top of that, once the general idea of sin is clear you’ll have to obviously show the fact that since sin is against the character of God, it’s always directed against the character of God, never against men, then therefore the ultimate sin is what you do with Christ who is God in the flesh.
Now let’s come to John 16:10, the second, paragraph two in the orders to the Holy Spirit for emphasis. “Of righteousness,” the first thing then, the Holy Spirit will clarify what sin is and will quickly lead to the sin. Now it’s true, the Holy Spirit may use some sins on a chain of rising awareness until somebody gets to see the sin, but it’s basically that, and by the way, it’s been my observation that this holds true in the Christian life. In counseling involving all sorts of things, it’s been amazing to watch, the Holy Spirit doesn’t seem to emphasize personal sin. Now that’s not to condone it; that’s not to condone it! Be careful! What the Holy Spirit does is emphasize the unbelief behind the sin. And I’ve never yet seen a Christian come out of the toulie trip who hasn’t had to come to very hard grips with the problem of am I thankful for what God has given to me. Am I willing to say He is worthy. Do I really trust His character? That’s always the issue; it comes in 1008 different forms but that’s always right there and until that is dealt with, you can talk about this little psychological problem and that psychological problem and being an influence here and being an influence there and all the rest of it, but it always boils down to the same issue: unbelief.
Now the second issue is righteousness, “because I go to My Father, and you see Me no more.” So what’s this? Why does Christ go to the Father and why do we see Him no more? Is it not, as we said at the end of the communion service, we sang that hymn, The Lord is risen today, why do we always do that? To show that Christ is the perfectly acceptable one with the Father. That’s why He goes to be with the Father, He’s acceptable with the Father. Only Christ is the perfectly righteousness one to be accepted with the Father. That’s the point here, “Of righteousness,” not our righteousness, but Christ’s righteousness. That’s the kind of righteousness meant in verse 10 and therefore what ought to be emphasized.
Again I read a section from Dr. Chafer as he made the discovery of this neglect in preaching the gospel back in the 20s. “Gospel preaching has made much of the remission of sin through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, and not more than should be,” though Dr. Chafer is not knocking forgiveness of sin, that’s fine, “but a deplorable neglect has been accorded the equally requisite truth that a perfect standing is imputed also to the one who believes. The truth of the gospel, as outlined in John 16:7-11, is presented in a full-orbed perfection. Wherein it exceeds man’s restricted discernment of the gospel will but serve to demonstrate the inattention of men to the paramount theme. As over against this careless notion that any kind of a statement will serve as a gospel message, attention should again be drawn to the unrevoked anathema of Galatians 1:8-9,” any other gospel should be accursed. “So little, indeed, is the fact and value of imputed righteousness comprehended—due to a large extent to the neglect of it—that it is not easy to develop this truth to the same level or realization to which the more accentuated verity of forgiveness of sin has attained. There can be no question that the two ideas—imputed righteousness and remission of sin—are, as a challenge to the human understanding, incomparable, largely due, it would seem, to the obvious fact that remission of sin is a more or less common experience in human relationships, while the imputation of righteousness has no parallel in human experience outside that set forth in the gospel.”
And what he’s pointing out is very few times in a gospel presentation is it ever mentioned that we have a God here who is absolutely perfect and righteousness and therefore to stand in His presence you have to have absolute righteousness or justice will take care of you. Where does this absolute righteousness come from? Where does it come from? Does it come because the Holy Spirit works in your heart? Wrong? That’s Catholicism; that’s what the Reformation was all about. The righteousness does not come by the Holy Spirit. Righteousness comes by Christ’s finished work on the cross and that finished work on the cross is being credited to your account by Him in His high priestly work. The Holy Spirit had nothing to do with it. The Holy Spirit makes you aware of it, makes me aware of it, and the Holy Spirit does something to generate some righteousness in our souls now but not perfect righteousness.
Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking
that your acceptability with God at this moment is dependent upon the Holy
Spirit’s work. See, this is what some
Christians still, I’m sure, in
This second truth is the basis for stability. Every person who thinks he can lose his salvation has not comprehended verse 10; justification is tragically misunderstood in Arminian circles; it really never has been understood and this breeds all sorts of psychological problems in Christians, up again, down again, doing this gimmick, doing that gimmick, why do we have these people trotting around trying to find the baptism of the Holy Spirit thing when they were already baptized with the Holy Spirit at the point of salvation. Because they’re looking for something else to add to give them security. Do you know why they don’t have security? Because the very first time they became a Christian they never understood what Luther, Calvin and the Reformers understood; I am justified and I stand here with all my grossities and all my sin and all my rebellion in perfect status before God, and it seems almost queasy to comprehend, there we stand and we can carry on a conversation, as it were, face to face, eyeball to eyeball with God Himself. Now why is that possible? Why is that kind of a standing possible? Certainly not because of anything we’ve got. It’s only because of Christ’s righteousness credited to our account.
The last great truth that is emphasized here is the theme of judgment… the theme of judgment. Now why is that? Well, Christ has said in verse 9 “of sin,” and that’s “because they don’t believe on Me,” that’s the emphasis. [10] “Of righteousness,” not any kind of righteousness, but the righteousness that I have and that I have before My Father. Now of judgment: “Of judgment, because the prince of this world has been judged.” Now notice the theme in verse 11 is not… is NOT, the final judgment, the great white throne judgment. Now isn’t that interesting? How many times in an evangelistic service when judgment is mentioned don’t you hear that, and have you ever heard this; think how screwed up evangelism is. This third theme emphasizes the judgment has already occurred; it doesn’t emphasize a future judgment; that’s there, and that’s certainly real and that’s certainly a consideration, but the Holy Spirit has been given three orders and the orders don’t have anything about emphasizing the great white throne judgment in our generation. It’s a truth, always be able to teach the truth, but the emphasis is not there in the gospel.
The emphasis is upon this judgment of Satan. Now how was Satan judged at the cross. Turn to Colossians 2;14-15, “Blotting out the handwriting or ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross; [15] And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” On the cross Christ broke Satan’s legal hold. Those of you who have been reading the Narnia Chronicles, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you should have very fresh images of the breaking of the legal hold of Satan. So as this legal hold is broken, what is the main thing? The curse is death. If Christ breaks Satan’s hold, then it becomes possible for you and for me who are part and parcels of a damned creation, a creation under God’s sentence of death, to live again. Why? Because the legal requirements have been met at the cross and since they have, life can occur again in the picture is the resurrection. That’s why when we sang at the end of the communion service, you notice one lyric, O death, where is thy victory, where is thy sting, and this is a quotation from 1 Corinthians 15. It’s the Christian, Paul in this case, and he’s ridiculing it, I’m out from under that. Death has no hold because my soul has been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, a massive breaking down of this whole legal octopus-like tentacle suction that Satan has over the creation to keep the curse going and over us.
Those are the three things of the gospel. Let’s turn back to John 16 and wind it up with that end point. Verse 13 starts another thing but we won’t get to that. How is the believer to respond to pressure of the world? Answer: he is to stress these three issues. When the world tries to persecute the Christian the Church fights back and the primary way the Church fights back is to simply amplify the volume on these three points. The more Satan throws at us the more clearer, the more skillful and the more effective we’ll become at these emphases. We stay away from the gimmicks, away from everything else and concentrate on these things. That’s the gospel.
Now let’s tie that in with our usual four-part presentation of the gospel. God, sin, the cross and faith. That’s the basic outline of the content of the gospel. Now how are these three emphases part of it. In all three emphases you have the character of God; God’s attributes have to be just as clear as they can possibly be to the unbeliever or he’s going to miss the whole point. He’s going to take what you say and it’s going to run in one ear and it’s going to get filtered around in all of this human viewpoint and it’s going to come out the other side as some sort of social program of improvement, or psychological thing, or some sort of a competitive… and it’s wrong. So God’s character has to be the emphasis.
“Of sin,” as the character of sin is rebellion against God and it’s most clearly emphasized with rebellion against Jesus Christ. So there’s the place for verse 9; verses 9 and 11 are also contained in the nature of God. And then verse 10, Jesus Christ had perfect righteousness can be stressed at that point in the gospel presentation. What He has done is not only secure forgiveness, He has generated righteousness which can then be credited to our account. Also verse 11 can be part of that third step, and that is where Jesus Christ has broken the back of Sin. And then the fourth one is just the response to that, with no gimmicks, no emotional pressure, just conviction based on conscience.
With our heads bowed…