Cantate
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 11:07
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It is the fifth week of the seven-week season of Easter. You will notice that as we near the day of Pentecost, the texts increasingly focus on the coming of the Holy Spirit. While Jesus was still with his disciples on earth, he began to teach them of the Holy Spirit, in preparation for the day of his Ascension to the Father. “But when I go, I will send [the Holy Spirit] to you” (Jn 16:7b). The Holy Spirit, Jesus tells us, will do two things: Firstly, he will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment, and secondly, he will teach us the words of Jesus.
Many Christians have a lot of strange ideas about what the Holy Spirit does. Some people think that He causes people to convulse and roll around on the floor and jabber unintelligible nonsense. Other people think that the Holy Spirit whispers secrets into their hearts, such as telling them what car to buy, whom to marry, and whether or not to order takeout tonight. Still others think that the Holy Spirit gives you a warm fuzzy feeling when the guitar player plays your favorite song. This is not what Jesus says the Holy Spirit will do.
The first thing Jesus says the Holy Spirit will do is convict the world. To convict means to show someone that they are wrong. In a world that teaches that there’s no such thing as absolute right and wrong, it’s not very popular to tell people: “You’re wrong!” Nobody likes to hear that—not even Christians. No wonder much of the Church is busy inventing new jobs for the Holy Spirit apart from what Jesus said he would do.
But the Holy Spirit doesn’t care about popular opinion. He’s not like our politicians who take polls to decide what their convictions should be. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. And He tells the truth by saying to the world, “You are wrong—wrong about sin, wrong about righteousness, and wrong about judgment.”
Let’s start with sin. How is the world wrong? The world doesn’t have the faintest clue what sin is. God tells us clearly about sin in his word: Sin is when we fail to keep the Ten Commandments. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. Sin is when we do not love God with our whole heart, and do not love our neighbor as ourselves. Sin is the default condition of the fallen human heart.
But the world says, “We know better than God. Murder is not sin. When a mother kills her unborn child that is called good health care. Sexual deviancy is not adultery; it’s freedom of expression. Sin does not arise from within the human heart, sin arises from oppressive power structures. Our culture has thrown out God’s definition of sin, calling evil good and good evil. Does this mean there are no sins according to the world? Far from it.
Instead of what God calls sin, the new secular religion has a growing list of offenses, and they are all unforgivable. Do you think that men shouldn’t be able to compete in women’s sports? You are a hateful and despicable person. Would you rather eat a burger made from a cow than one grown from algae in a lab? You are guilty of genocide against Mother Earth. Were you raised in a stable home with a loving mother and father? You are a patriarchal colonizer.
This desire to invent and impose our own categories of sins can be traced back to the Garden of Eden. God said to Adam and Eve: “I am the one who knows the difference between what is good and what is evil. I decide what is sin and what is not.” But the serpent said, “Eat the fruit and you can be like God. You can know and determine for yourselves what is good and what is evil.” In this regard the woke cult that is enveloping our nation today is nothing new. It is simply another manifestation of Satan’s religion, in which man, not God, decides what is sin and what isn’t.
The tragedy is that, since only God can forgive sin, in a made-up religion with made-up sins, there can never be any forgiveness. If you said something stupid as a teenager and somebody digs it up, well then, your life and career are over. And will there be anything you can do or say to earn forgiveness? Never. Where there is not true sin, there is not true forgiveness.
This is why the Holy Spirit comes to convict the world of sin. God desires to forgive every person of every sin. And in order for us to receive this very real forgiveness, the Holy Spirit must first show us what sin is. He convicts the world of sin.
The Holy Spirit also convicts the world concerning righteousness. This means that what our culture teaches about being a good person is wrong. No, riding a bicycle instead of driving a car does not make you righteous. Knowing how and when to use all thirty-seven of the new pronouns does not make you a loving person. Being a member of an oppressed minority group does not make you worthier than others. Everything the world teaches about righteousness is wrong. And just because you are a Christians doesn’t mean you don’t have things backwards. How many members of the Church are counting on their good deeds to earn standing before God.
The Holy Spirit says, “No. That’s wrong. There is only way to become righteous, and it’s not something you do. The righteous shall live by faith in Christ. His work, not yours, open the door to heaven. Only He can forgive your sins and declare you righteous and worthy of eternal life.
Finally, the Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning judgment. How many times have you heard someone say, “Jesus wouldn’t judge. He loves and accepts everyone exactly how they are.” Well, they’re wrong. What would Jesus do? The Holy Spirit tells us in the Bible that no one else will be doing the judging—except Jesus! All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to Him, and on the Last Day, Jesus—not God the Father—Jesus will be the one sitting on the judgment seat. Want to be prepared for that day? Then pay attention to what the Holy Spirit teaches us about sin, righteousness, and judgment.
The world teaches that certain classes of people are sinners and others are righteous. If you are a well-to-do white male, then you’re the worst kind of sinner. But if you’re a poor immigrant, preferably female—or even better, transsexual—then you are righteous above all others. But false teaching concerning sin and righteousness is destructive and will not help anyone on Judgment Day. Only the words of Jesus that the Holy Spirit teaches us can offer true hope and righteousness to us sinners.
Those words are this: All have sinned and fall short of the righteousness of God. All are under the judgment to God. But in his infinite mercy, God desires that none would perish. His heart overflows with true forgiveness for all. He makes no distinctions between groups of sinners. He loves all equally. And he offers the pure gift of righteousness to all who believe in the perfect life and obedient death of Jesus. Come, bring your sins to Jesus, and let the Holy Spirit teach you of true forgiveness. And then, clothed with the robe of Christ’s righteousness, you will not fear the judgment on the Final Day.