Foundation for Living #14

Lord we do thank You for this opportunity to gather together to worship You and praise You through music. Father we thank You that You have provided the freedom for us in this nation that we can freely serve You, worship You and study Your word. We pray now as we come together as a congregation that our worship will glorify You. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen

Psalm 119

25 My soul clings to the dust;
         Revive me according to Your word.
26 I have declared my ways, and You answered me;
         Teach me Your statutes.
27 Make me understand the way of Your precepts;
         So shall I meditate on Your wonderful works.
28 My soul melts from heaviness;
         Strengthen me according to Your word.
29 Remove from me the way of lying,
         And grant me Your law graciously.
30 I have chosen the way of truth;
         Your judgments I have laid before me.
31 I cling to Your testimonies;
         O LORD, do not put me to shame!
32 I will run the course of Your commandments,
         For You shall enlarge my heart.

 This is the record that God has given to us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life, He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. He who believes on Him is not condemned, but he who believeth not is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. For there is no other name under heaven, given among men whereby we must be saved. For by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor death nor any other created thing is able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things to whom be the glory forever. Amen.  

Before we begin our study of God's word this morning, let’s make sure that we are prepared to study the Word. Scripture says that when we trust Christ as our savior we are forgiven of all sin, we have eternal life and that can never be taken from us. Nevertheless, as we continue to live and still have the sin nature, we still commit sin and there needs to be ongoing cleansing. The promise of God in 1 John 1:9 is that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When we admit or acknowledge our sins to Him in the privacy of our priesthood, at that instant we are cleansed, we are forgiven, we recover the sanctifying ministry of God the Holy Spirit, we continue to walk by means of the Spirit so that we can take in the Word of God and we can continue to grow to spiritual maturity. So we always begin with a few moments of silent prayer, and then I will open in prayer. Let’s pray.

Father, from eternity past You have declared the end from the beginning, and before the foundation of the world, the Lamb of God was slain for the sins of the world. The plan of salvation extends throughout all of history and the focal point is the cross of Jesus Christ, that He was incarnate in the flesh, eternal God became man for the purpose of going to the cross to die for our sins. This is the revolutionary event of all history that transformed and laid the basis for the ultimate redemption of mankind and of all creation. Father, we pray that as we study Your word today and we continue to study about how we as believers are involved in Your plan, proclamation of the truth of the gospel, we pray that You would challenge us with these things that God the Holy Spirit would give us fresh courage and ideas as we think about witnessing to the world around us and that we might have the courage and strength that comes only from the power of God the Holy Spirit as we are engaged in a witness of both our life and our lips. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Last time we began a short study on witnessing, on communicating the gospel to those around us. And the foundation for this is laid in a passage in 2 Corinthians 5: 18. This is part of our witness. In Acts 1:8, Jesus said as His parting word to the disciples:

you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

This lays out the witnessing game plan for the church age. The basis for this is in the doctrine of reconciliation as we saw in the way we examined 2 Corinthians 5:18 and following. There the apostle Paul says that:

all things from God who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.

Now by way of observation we need to recognize that the us there is not an apostolic us, that is not a first person plural referring to we the apostles, he is not talking about the fact that God gave to the apostles this ministry of reconciliation because the first use of the first person plural there is in the previous phrase that God has reconciled us, that is all who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, this reconciliation has taken place through Jesus Christ and He has given us, the same people who are reconciled, he has given us this ministry of reconciliation, that is as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ it is part of our responsibility to communicate the gospel, the good news that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. This is developed in the next verse where Paul says that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, that means that God was not recconning their personal sins to them, remember the foundation of all condemnation is the sin of Adam, Adam’s original sin, and because of Adam’s fall, as the old Puritan Primer put it, in Adam’s fall, we sinned all. And so because Adam was the designated federal head of the human race, when he sinned in the Garden of Eden and disobeyed God, the entire progeny of Adam fell in sin and spiritual death and condemnation was passed on to all mankind. Now there are some folks, and sometimes when you witness and you are explaining the gospel to folks and they’ll say, well, that doesn’t seem to be fair because I didn’t have anything to do with that, why should I be condemned for anything Adam did. And the answer to that is that God structured the creation and the human race in such a way that we are in one sense and organic or federal collective whole. So that there is a genetic relationship between all humanity, therefore, because Adam was the designated head, when he fell, his condemnation passed to the entire human race but the way God designed it was that this also meant that Jesus Christ, as true humanity, could die for the sins of the rest of the human race. So just as the guilt of Adam passed to the entire human race, so the salvation provided with Jesus Christ could pass to the entire human race because God designed this so that it would be this organic whole that we are all related to one another genetically therefore Christ could die for the sins of the world. Now that doesn’t save you, just because Christ died and paid the penalty, does not mean all are saved, there has to be a volitional response which is why God has committed to us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ this ministry of announcing the gospel and explaining the gospel to all mankind. So Paul goes on to say in verse 20:

Now then we, that is we believers, are ambassadors for Christ.

And in this series where we are studying the foundation for living, that is the foundation for the Christian life, we have looked at the two aspects of the Christian life related to our priesthood that every believer, at the instant of salvation, is made a royal priest to God. Scripture says that we don’t go through any intermediary other than the Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 2:7 says:

for there is one God, and one mediator the man, Christ Jesus.

There is no human priesthood through whom to go in approaching God. We go directly to God, as believer priests. So every believer is a priest that has direct access to God the Father, through, and only through, the Lord Jesus Christ. We are also ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ, our priesthood has to do with our relationship to God, the ambassadorship has to do with our relationship to humanity. We are sent forth as messengers from the kingdom of God, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, our citizenship is not of the earth it is of heaven and we go forth with a divine commission to announce the message of salvation to mankind. Just as I pointed out last time, as ambassadors we are in a foreign culture which the Scripture describes as the world system or the cosmic system, and we are to represent God and Christ to the cosmic system and we are not to become distracted or enveloped in the thinking of this foreign culture. That is why you go to church. You go to church so you can learn to think biblically as citizens of heaven and learn to think in terms of the culture of Scripture and not the culture of humanity. It is what we call divine viewpoint versus human viewpoint. So we are ambassadors for Christ. Paul says:

as though God were pleading through us,

See, God is not going to save people apart from certain means that He has ordained. And one of those means is through those who proclaim the gospel.

How shall they hear, if there is not one to proclaim the truth, Isaiah says.

So we are sent forth to proclaim the gospel, and it is only through believers and their proclamation of the gospel that the gospel goes forth. God does not make an end run around us. So we have the privilege to be included within His plan and people are not saved because of us, their saved through us, and it is a glorious thing when we have that privilege to be used by the Lord to communicate the gospel to folks. We never know how that is going to come to fruition. It may take years, it may take months, we may never see in this life how we fit within that overall plan. I pointed out last time as the apostle Paul stated that using the agricultural analogy that one plants, another waters and another brings in the harvest. So we don’t know where we fit in the process with many people. We just have that opportunity to communicate the gospel and we may be the one who just plants the seed, we may be someone who comes along and restates the gospel, they have heard it two or three times, they hear it again and they are going to hear it five, six, eight, ten, fifteen more times before finally they make a decision to trust Christ as their savior. So we don’t know where we are in the process. Our responsibility is simply to be faithful. It is not our job to solve every problem, answer every question, deal with every objection. It is not our job to convince people of the truth of the gospel, it is our job to explain the gospel. That takes a load of responsibility off most folks when they come to understand that. Because too often we put ourselves under this load of responsibility and we end up intimidating ourselves and scaring ourselves off so, well, I’m not ready to handle that person, they’ve got objections, they’ve got questions I don’t quite know how to deal with, so I’ll just pray about it. So we feel very sanctimonious as we back off and pray about it, instead of being involved and being part of the process. So we are ambassadors for Christ and God is pleading through us and Paul says:

This is the message,we implore you on Christ’s behalf to be reconciled to God.

Then verse 21 states a foundational part of the message. And this relates to the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

For He who made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.

At the cross, Jesus Christ received the imputation, that’s a fancy word for accounting, actually the original Greek and also the Hebrew word were accounting terms. For you accountants, it just shows how much of the Bible, especially the gospel, relates to economic concepts. You talk about redemption, reconciliation, and canceling the debt of trespasses against us, these are economic terms. So the Bible, once again, addresses every area of human activity and even the gospels presented in this economic terminology. So if you’re involved in economics you can give a little extra thought in terms of how that would affect a view of finances and economics.

Our sins were imputed to Jesus Christ so that He was not personally guilty of sin, remember, He was without sin, but He receives the imputation of our sin, the judgment is put upon Him judicially. So that He becomes our substitute. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin as a substitute for us. Literally,

that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

This is the purpose for His death, is so that when we trust in Him as our savior, then His perfect righteousness is in turn instantly imputed, reckoned or counted to our account. We are born with a negative amount in our account as it were, there is a deficit, and when we receive the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, there is a positive balance that can never be undone. It is ours, His righteousness is now our righteousness, and so when God the Father looks at us in His justice, He doesn’t see the sin, the failure in our lives, He sees the righteousness of Christ. And so at that instant He declares us to be justified. And this is the foundational doctrine that under girds all of salvation, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, that we declared just, not on the basis of who and what we are, or what we do, or any morality on our part or any religious activity on our part, we are declared just because we possess His righteousness. And that occurs at the instant of salvation, and that is the foundation of the gospel. And that should be part of our presentation when we are explaining the gospel to folks, as to how we are saved, it is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saves us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

Now last time I pointed out several principles related to witnessing that I want to briefly review, I’m only going to review three of these, I gave about nine or ten, but I’m just going to briefly touch on three of those by way of review.

First of all, that witnessing is the responsibility of every believer. God has designated that it is through us that He is going to present the gospel, and we are witnesses in two areas in our life, and through our lips. They work together. You can’t separate one from the other. There are some folks who say, well, I’ll just let my life be my testimony. Well, nobody is going to get saved, nobody is going to understand the content of the gospel by just watching how any believer lives, they have to hear the specifics, which are that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, that by faith alone in Christ alone we have salvation. So our life merely backs up what we say with our testimony. Now part of this is a recognition that all believers are still sinners, and that salvation is based on grace, because sometimes folks will say, well, Christians are holier than thou, and that is the legalistic type, and it’s not what we do, it is never what we do, so we are always going to fail. Every believer has a sin nature and is going to fail in all kinds of different ways and we recognize that we are all saved by grace, no one is any better than any one else, and Jesus Christ died equally for the sins of every single human being, so that we all get saved the same way, by trusting in Christ alone.

The third principle I gave last time, is that the effectiveness of our witnessing depends on the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, not on our own power, not on our own intellectual ability or on our own persuasiveness. It is not up to us, it is not our talent, it is not our ability, it is simply that we are faithful in communicating and explaining the gospel as clearly as we can, and sometimes you fumble around, and we’ve all done that, and yet, God the Holy Spirit uses that to make the gospel clear for folks. It always amazes me, as the years go by, I’ll hear somebody who heard something I was teaching and I hardly touched on the gospel and yet the Holy Spirit made the gospel clear just in something brief that I said about the gospel. So we never know how the Holy Spirit is using it, it is up to us simply to be faithful as part of our responsibility of our ambassadorship. Romans 1:16 says that:

I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God to salvation to every one who believes , to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

It is God who has the power in the process of witnessing it is God the Holy Spirit who makes it clear and it is God the Father who makes things clear, the power is not in us, it is in God.

Point 6, that God uses prepared believers. God uses prepared believers. We need to know the biblical issues related to salvation. That salvation is not, as many people want to put it today, inviting Jesus into your heart, or inviting Jesus into your life, it is not some psychological renewal, it is not some emotional experience, salvation has to do with trusting Christ as savior, so we have to make sure that the issues of sin and condemnation related to Adam’s original sin are made clear as done this morning. We also need to make sure that people understand who Jesus Christ is. That when we talk about Jesus we are not talking about the Jesus of the Krishnas, the Jesus that the Muslims recognize who is simply a great prophet, but a man, the Jesus of any religious system, but the Jesus of the Bible is both the eternal God of the Universe who created everything and He became flesh, He entered into human history, took on true humanity, without giving up His deity, so that He is both undiminished deity and true humanity united in one person. And that these realities lay the foundation for what He could do on the cross. And because He is who He claimed to be, He could go to the cross and pay the penalty for our sins, only God could take care of the problem and only a man could die as our substitute, so both of these have to be true. We have to understand the doctrine of justification by faith, so that we can make it clear, that it is not by our own works. We can do nothing to achieve the righteousness of God. The Old Testament teaches in Isaiah that all of our works of righteousness, not our unrighteousness, but all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. That no matter how good we get, no matter how much good we perform, God looks at it and the sum total of our best is filthy rags in the sight of God, because it doesn’t measure up to His standard of perfect righteousness. So once people understand that it is not up to them, it is up to Christ, and that the issue is not their failures, their sin, it is their trust in Christ as savior that is the issue for salvation. That nothing else matters. And if anything else is introduced into the equation, if it’s faith plus ritual, faith plus any kind of religious activity, faith plus morality, faith plus baptism, faith plus commitment, then whatever you add to it, totally destroys faith. Because it is not simple faith alone in Christ, it is faith plus something else, and man is bringing his own works, his own effort, whatever it may be to the table, to try to impress God. So this is completely rejected, it is faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

Now, that brings up to about the point where I stopped last time, and I wanted to go over some general guidelines for witnessing. Just some general guidelines that you should think about that should shape your thinking in the process of explaining the gospel to coworkers, friends, family, strangers, whoever. We have to think within a biblical framework.

First principle: if God exists, then reality is what God says it is. Think about that. If God exists, then reality is what He says it is. So when we are witnessing to folks, we are coming from a position of strength because we understand the nature of reality, and they are divorced from reality. So we can operate with confidence.

Furthermore, the next point, if God exists, then He has revealed that reality to us. We have the game plan. We have the owner’s manual. We have the Scripture. He has revealed His Word to us. He has informed us what the nature of reality is, He has informed us what the nature of the problem is between man and Himself, so that we are informed as to what the real dynamics are in the witnessing process, and what the problems are. We know what the rules are. We’ve read the rule book, the unbeliever hasn’t and as it were, we are playing chess but the unbeliever comes to the table and he is trying to play checkers. He is trying to play according to the rules of whatever game he wants to play, but we understand what the real game is and what the rules are. So we have to make sure that he conforms to the rules of reality, we are not going to compromise by slipping into his presuppositions. You are not going to start playing checkers in order to bring him into a chess game. You have to challenge him with the fact that his whole concept of reality is distorted and is false.

That leads to the third principle: if God exists, the unbeliever is what God says he is.

Now he may deny that, he may reject that , he may not want to admit it, he may be running from it, as Scripture says, he is suppressing that truth in unrighteousness, he is enveloping it in his own arrogant distortion of reality, but nevertheless, in the core of his soul, every unbeliever, every person knows that God exists, and that He is who the Bible says He is. So if God exists, the unbeliever is what God says he is, and he knows what God says he knows. He may deny it, he may have figured out at way to cover this all over with a thick callous, but nevertheless, at the very core of his soul, he knows what God says he knows.

This leads to the fourth point. The unbeliever, according to the Scripture, is able to understand enough of the meaning of the nonverbal revelation of creation to know that God exists, and to be accountable to that. Let me break that down a little bit. First of all, what the Scripture says is that the unbeliever is able to understand from the nonverbal revelation of creation, now what in the world does that mean?

Psalm 19:21 says: the heavens declare the glory of God.

Romans 1:19-22 says that: the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because, now this is the important part to pay attention to, because that which is known about God is evident within them.

Now here, you have an atheist, an agnostic, some Buddhist or Muslim and they are saying, this is who God is or God does not exist, but the God who created them says that enough knowledge of Him is within them, because God made it evident to them. How did He do that? Through the nonverbal evidence in creation.

Verse 24: since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen.

It is not muddy. Now they are going to say, it wasn’t enough, and when they stand before the great white throne judgment, God is going to say, you knew, and they are going to know that they knew. They aren’t going to be able to blow smoke anymore. They can blow smoke at you, and they can blow smoke at me, but that doesn’t mean that they really but that in the core of their soul.

So Scripture says: His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, been understood, through what has been made, the heavens declare the glory of God.

So that there is a non verbal testimony by the evidence of creation around us. The complexity of creation, the details of creation, the design of creation, everything around us is the result of God’s creation and a tree is what it is because God made it that way, the universe and the stars are what they are because God made them that way, flowers are what they are because God made them that way and every time you look, every time any human being looks at any aspect of creation he sees God’s name attached to it, and he wants to suppress that in unrighteousness, that is the result of sin and rebellion against God. What this says is that everything screams to him that God exists. God has made it evident within them and the evidence of His creation is clearly seen and this speaks of His invisible attributes, His power, His nature, so that they understand who He is and they are without excuse, there is accountability. There is enough evidence just in the nonverbal witness of creation to make every human being accountable for rejecting God if they reject Him and are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

The result of this is that:

even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

The principle here is that whenever somebody rejects the God of the Bible, they always substitute something else. Something else always takes its place. Either they start worshiping themselves or they worship some other aspect of creation, they worship power, money, material things, they worship intellectual ability. Whatever it may be, something always takes the place of God. When you take God out something always goes into the vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. Spiritual reality abhors a vacuum, and when you reject the God of the Bible, you are going to substitute something else and you are going to worship something in the creation. The conclusion then of Paul is:

Professing to be wise, they become fools.

They build these sophisticated intellectual castles to explain creation, to explain reality, to explain who man is and to explain every thing about creation. But it is all foolishness. It may seem sophisticated, they may have triple PhD’s but it is foolishness. They are worshipping some aspect, and they are deifying at some level, some aspect of creation. Now this is the framework we come to when we are explaining the gospel. I don’t mean we are going to go through this with an unbeliever, but this sets your mindset and my mindset so we recognize that if Scripture says that God exists and if God exists then creation is what He says it is, the unbeliever is what He says He is and the unbeliever knows what God says he knows. In other words, you may be talking to some body who is putting up a smoke screen of atheism or agnosticism but in the core of their heart they know that what you are saying is true. So it’s almost like having a fifth column operating in their soul and God the Holy Spirit is also working with what we say to make it clear. Now that doesn’t mean they will respond, that doesn’t meant they will believe, because there is still that negative volition suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, but it lets us know we operate from a position of strength and we are not just out there on our own and it does not depend on our intellectual abilities to answer every objection, or know every detail or twist of all the different arguments and skepticism that can possibly be presented.

Therefore, point five, the ultimate issue therefore is not evidence, it is not reason, and it is not empirical data. Now I’m not saying there is no evidence or it is contrary to the evidence, I’m not saying it’s irrational, and I’m not saying that it is not based on empirical data. But what I am saying is that ultimately the issue is not evidence. God says there is enough evidence to accuse them that there is more that enough evidence for them to know that God exists, so the issue is not evidence. It is not reason. In the core of their thinking they know God exists. The evidence is not empirical data. You can pile up all the arguments for the existence for God and all the evidence for Christianity, and you can pile it up to the top of the stratosphere, and because it is not an intellectual issue, but a spiritual issue, the unbeliever can still say, well, you know, it is all very fascinating, but I don’t buy it, because he is committed to suppressing the truth in righteousness. It is not our job to convince them of the truth of the gospel, it is not our job to argue with them with the most sophisticated philosophical theological arguments, it is our job to make the issue clear and God the Holy Spirit then takes that and drives it home. Then it is their responsibility whether they accept it or reject it. So the problem is not an intellectual problem, the problem is not a problem of empiricism or rationalism, it is not a matter of not having enough evidence, it is a matter of a disposition of the soul to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. But the bottom line is that this gives us great confidence because it is not up to us. We don’t leave the conversation by saying you know if I had just been able to answer that argument, if I’d just known a little more, if I had just taken a few more courses, maybe gone to Bible college or seminary, then I could have handled what this individual said. The issue is not intellectual, rational or empirical, the issue is volitional and spiritual. So all we have to do is make the gospel clear.

Furthermore, point 6, if God exists as the Bible says He exists, then the Holy Spirit is doing certain things behind the scenes in the soul of the unbeliever making the issue clear. So we can approach the believer knowing two things. We know, number 1, he already knows God exists, it doesn’t matter what the smoke screen is, he already knows God exists. Number two, as I am communicating the gospel in whatever fumbling mumbling manner I’ve got, God the Holy Spirit is taking it and making it clear. Now as we mature as believers and as we advance in our abilities to make the gospel clear, in a sense, that helps. What I am saying is that because the Holy Spirit is making it clear, it doesn’t give you an excuse to be unclear and fuzzy in your gospel presentation. But, as we grow and as we are more experienced in explaining the gospel to folks then we can be a little more adept in our presentation. And one of the passages that the Scripture uses that talks about the role of the Holy Spirit gives us an idea of what the Holy Spirit is honing in on when we are explaining the gospel to somebody. And that is John 16. John 16 informs us of the role of God the Holy Spirit. This is important because there are some different views out there on just exactly what is going on in the communication process. This goes back to a principle of 1Corinthians 2:14, which says:

The natural man, that is the unbeliever, the word there in the Greek is psuchikos, it means he has a soul, but he lacks a human spirit, which is what comes with regeneration. The natural man does not receive the things of the spirit of God, that is in context, the things of the spirit of God are divine revelation as contained within the cannon of scripture, so the soulish man does not receive, he does not accept, he does not understand the things of the spirit of God because they are foolishness to him. It doesn’t make sense within his finite human viewpoint frame of reference. It appears to be foolishness to him, nor can he know them, Paul says. Because they are spiritually discerned. And that last phrase spiritually discerned indicates there is something that is required at salvation which we call the human spirit, which is what Adam lost when he died spiritually when he sinned, that there is something required at salvation, a regeneration called the human spirit which enables the individual to understand the things of God. So how can an unbeliever understand the things of God if he is spiritually dead? Well, this is the solution in John 16 is that it is God the Holy Spirit who substitutes for this human spirit to make the gospel clear to the unbeliever.

In John 16:7, Jesus is giving His parting words to the disciples the night before He goes to the cross and He says:

But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you.

In other words, I need to leave so this other Helper that is of the same kind I am, referring to the Holy Spirit in His deity, will come. And He is the one who is going to indwell you and enable you and strengthen you in the spiritual life.

So He says: the Helper shall not come to you but if I go I will send Him to you.

Now, the Helper is translation of the Greek word parakletos, some translations use the word comforter, some translations use different English words to translate this, the idea of a paraklete comes from two words in the Greek, kaleo is the verb from kletos meaning to call, and para is a preposition meaning alongside, and it comes to refer to somebody who is an assistant or a helper, to someone else. He comes along side. So it is God the Holy Spirit who is, I don’t like that word comforter, He is a helper, He is an assistant, He is one who gives us the strength and the power to live the Christian life and to fulfill the responsibilities of our ambassadorship, the duties of our priesthood so the spiritual is dependent upon the power and ministry of God the Holy Spirit. So He says, I will send the paraklete, the assistant to you.

Verse 8: and when He comes will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement.

Three things He is going to do. The word convict here is the Greek word alenko, which means to bring something into a courtroom and establish a case to demonstrate its veracity. It is a courtroom term. So what this passage says is that God the Holy Spirit is going to build an unshakeable case concerning three things: sin, righteousness and judgment. Now who is He going to build this case to? To believers? No. To the world. Who is the world? The world is the group of unbelievers who inhabit this globe for whom Christ died. For God so loved the what? The world, that He gave His unique Son, that whosoever believes on Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. So this group of people known as the world, for whom Christ died, are the people that the Holy Spirit is going to make this unshakeable, unbreakable case concerning the truth of the gospel. And it is going to relate to three issues. Sin, righteousness and judgment.

We get the explanation starting in verse 9:

Concerning sin because you did not believe in Me.

This is not saying that unbelief is a sin, it is saying that God the Holy Spirit is going to convict the world of sin. That they are in condemnation because of Adams original sin and they are in that state of sin because they do not believe in Christ. The solution has not yet been applied to their condemnation of Adams original sin.

The second thing the Holy Spirit is emphasizing is righteousness. We have already mentioned this: this is the whole doctrine of justification by faith. That word justification that we use and righteousness both translate the same word group out of the Greek. There is a Greek word group based on the word diakaiosune. You’ve got dikaios, which is righteosness, you’ve got dikaioo which is justice. You’ve got this whole word group which is either translated righteousness or justice, depending on the context. But this shows that righteousness and justice are interrelated concepts, the same thing is true about Hebrew. In the Hebrew language you have a word group based on the noun xxxxxxxxx which means righteousness, or sometimes justice. And these concepts interrelate. So the Holy Spirit is not only convicting, making an unshakeable, unbreakable case to the unbeliever that in Adams fall, we sinned all, and we are all under condemnation, but He is also going to emphasize the point that what is needed to be saved, to have a relationship with God, is the righteousness of God. You have to meet the standard of His righteousness. Anything less than that is not going to cut it. Scripture says that we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, which is another term for His righteousness and His character. So God the Holy Spirit is going to be making an unshakeable, unbreakable case that you don’t match God's righteousness, even your best deeds are what the Scripture says, filthy rags. So He builds the case for righteousness.

And then third, concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. At the cross, Jesus Christ is judged for the sin of the world. It is that judgment that defeats Satan. Satan is the ruler of this world. And it is the judgment of Christ on the cross for sin that completes the promise of God that was first articulated in Genesis 3:15 after the original sin, that the seed of the serpent would bruise the seed of the woman but the seed of the woman would crush the head of the seed of the serpent, indicating a fatal wound, and this is completed by Christ’s death on the cross. He is judged for sin and this is the final nail in the coffin of Satan, as it were.

So we have two things working for us in any gospel presentation, the unbeliever, despite whatever objections he may have, saying, I don’t believe in God. Maybe one of the things we need to ask in the midst of a gospel presentation is not why should you believe in God, but not answering that question of why they should believe in God, but saying, why are you rejecting God? Why do you reject God? Because that is what is really going on, just focusing on the real issue, is their choosing to reject God. Now why don’t you want God to exist? What is their answer going to be? Give them an opportunity to think that through.

Ninth point: our verbal witness must be one that does not compromise our view of reality. What do I mean by this? Well, we have to understand a couple of principles. First of all, witnessing is not a debate. Do not get involved in: this is my thinking ability versus your thinking ability. I am going to be right and prove that I am right and you are wrong. Witnessing is not a debate, it is not about who is right. It is not about convincing someone that they are wrong and you are right. We must remember it is not our job to win them, that is the job of God the Holy Spirit. It is our job to simply communicate the information. What happens, if we get off track, we start using their frame of reference to convince them of the truth of our position, and in doing that we compromise the foundation of our position. So it is important, not only to have the right content in our witnessing in terms of the gospel, but also the right methodology. We are not selling Jesus like a marketing tool, we are making an announcement of the fact that the Son of eternal God became flesh, dwelt among us and went to the cross to die on the cross

And it is our job to make that clear, and God the Holy Spirit is going to take whatever we communicate and He is going to drive it home into the thinking of the unbeliever, then it is up to them to decide. And we can just relax, if they decide to reject Christ fine, we just keep moving. Maybe we will get a chance to talk with them later, maybe not.

Furthermore, we have to recognize that often it takes time in a witnessing process. Most people do not respond right off the bat. So we go through a period of time, we may witness, somebody else may explain the gospel to them, and we can relax knowing that God is the one who is in charge. It is our responsibility. Scripture says we are all ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ.

So this lays the foundation for our responsibility as ambassadors to witness and to explain the gospel to unbelievers. Now there is a lot more that we can say about methodology and how to witness, but that gets beyond the basics, and this is a basic series we are concluding this morning, on the basic responsibilities and duties of the priesthood of the believer and his ambassadorship.

So next week we will come back, have a couple of specials for a couple of weeks, and then get back in our study of Revelation in two or three weeks.

With our heads bowed and our eyes closed.

Father, we do thank You that we have the clarity of Your word to rely on. That Your word communicates clearly to us who we are and the problem with the human race, which is sin and disobedience, specifically, that of Adam. And that we are all guilty,we are born spiritually dead, separated from You and without eternal life. But You loved us, and demonstrated Your love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You sent Your Son to pay the penalty for our sins, to die as our substitute, that we might have eternal life. But the issue is related to our volition, we have to make the decision, as Scripture says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. It is and unshakeable, unbreakable promise that we will have eternal life simply by trusting, relying exclusively on Jesus Christ and His work on the cross. Perhaps this morning you are here and you are not sure if you are saved, you have no confidence in your eternal salvation, but this morning you heard the gospel, it is clear, this is your opportunity to put your faith alone in Christ alone. It is not a matter of reforming your life, being involved in certain ritual, walking down an aisle, or any other human activity, it is a matter of your trust. At the instant you put your faith alone in Christ alone, God the Father, in His omniscience, knows what you are relying upon for salvation, and that instant you receive the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, you are declared just, you are born again, you receive new life, eternal life which can never be taken from you. And you will have the certainty and surety of your salvation. Now Father, we pray that You would challenge us with what we studied in terms of our responsibility of our ambassadorship, that we might go forth and be willing to be used by You to announce the message of reconciliation. We pray this is Christ's name. Amen