Cantate—The Holy Spirit: Conviction and Comfort
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore I said that he will take of mine and declare it to you.” The Holy Spirit will take what is mine and declare it to you (John 16:15).
What do you need as a Christian living in this world? What do we need as a Christian congregation in this world? We, like the disciples, think we know what we need. The disciples thought they needed Christ ruling visibly as King of Israel, sitting on a throne for the whole world to see. They thought this before and after the Lord went away to the Father in his suffering and death.
On our Lord's way to Jerusalem, to go away to the Father, the mother of Zebedee's sons came to him with her sons, kneeling down and asking something from our Lord. He said to her, “What do you wish?” She said to him, “Grant that these two sons of mine may sit, one on your right hand and the other on the left, in your kingdom.” But Jesus answered and said, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They said to him, “We are able.” So he said to them, “You will indeed drink my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by my Father.” And when the ten heard it, they were greatly displeased with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave-just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:20–28).
They want to bicker about a kingdom in this world where they get to sit on thrones next to Jesus, and he tells them that's not how it's going to be. That is not how he is going to rule.
After our Lord rose from the dead, and just before he ascends to heaven, he commanded the disciples not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, “You have heard from me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And he said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:4–8).
Their thoughts are directed toward carnal things. They're concerned with this world that is passing away, but their thoughts aren't completely wrong-not completely wrong. We need the Lord ruling over us and the world, lest it all falls apart. And he is king over all things, including Israel. What is wrong is our expectation regarding what this ruling and reigning looks like.
That's the problem. When our expectations concerning our Lord's reign over all things are out of sync with reality, we can fall into all sorts of unsound patterns of believing and living as Christians. We can look around our homes and churches and be unduly anxious over all sorts of matters that are above our pay grade.
Focusing on the church, consider the thoughts that pass through our minds as we think about this congregation or other LCMS congregations. There aren't enough people. There aren't enough children. The youth we do have leave when they move out of their parents' house. We can't afford to pay the bills and maintain our church building. We don't have a church building. We don't get enough visitors. The visitors we do get don't seem to stay. No one knows we exist.
The world cares more about crass comedians' podcasts, clean eating, and conspiracy theories. That might be true or might not. Even our most visible pastors in the sphere of mass media get a few thousand views-our Lutheran celebrities get a few thousand views-while false teachers, random people posting fake and filtered content about their banal life, and even outright unbelievers speaking of the most vile and disgusting things get millions of views. People care what they have to say, even if it's empty drivel. And the best and most engaging pastors among us and creative teachers get a few thousand.
The list of reasons we might become fearful and unduly anxious concerning the fate of the church on earth could be a lot longer. Those are just a few examples. And all of the various concerns here, when you zoom out beyond this or that particular LCMS congregation, are true. While this or that LCMS congregation might be growing and thriving numerically-there are several of them around us that look that way-the overall trend for every Christian denomination is downward, even the individual big ones that you see around you. It's all downward.
More and more Americans, every time we do one of these surveys, more and more of them are declaring “no religion in particular.” Even much of the growth seen in various church bodies, even in our own, aren't necessarily people converting from unbelief to Christianity. Rather, they are adult converts from Christian congregations that have become infested with false teaching, false practice, or both.
When we look at this, we may be tempted to have sorrow in our heart and quite a bit of anxiety. We might say to ourselves, “If only Jesus were here visibly, people would see that what we teach is the truth and our churches would be filled. If he would come and rule over us visibly as king, we'd no longer have to deal with outright unbelieving atheist apologists, false teachers in the church, and other such people.” The world would finally see that what we preach and teach here is worth paying attention to over something like another false teaching pope being appointed, or some first-time mom's YouTube short on how to get your baby to sleep through the night. Like I care. First-time mother? What in the world? But millions of views.
But if Jesus were here sitting on a throne where we all could see him, everyone would finally realize who they really need to be listening to and who they need to be paying attention to. Like we forgot that parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31).
We, like the disciples, need the Holy Spirit in times such as these, when we are grappling with thoughts such as these. When we have these thoughts, we, like Peter when he's rebuking the Lord Jesus concerning his foretelling of his death, are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men (Matthew 16:21–23). Our Lord says, “It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Comforter, the Consoler, the Helper will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you. And when he has come, he will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they do not believe in me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father and you see me no more; of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged” (John 16:7–11).
This is what you and I need. We need the Spirit of Truth to speak the truth against the world and our flesh that is still worldly and unbelieving-that world that we once belonged to, completely enslaved to the devil, by nature being children of wrath (Ephesians 2:1–3).
The truth that the Holy Spirit comes to speak is living and active, no matter whether there is one person listening or millions. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of their unbelief and works judgment by his word when they continue in their unbelief and apathy and their seeking after fleshly pleasures of this world. He does the same to those who might walk through these doors, hear the law of God preached against their unbelief, and then reject it, buck against it, dismiss you or me as closed-minded or unloving. He still is convicting the world concerning sin and unbelief in that regard.
And that same Holy Spirit is working in those who hear that law, convicting their unbelief, who experience godly grief and contrition over their sins. Over both kinds of hearers-the one that bucks against it and the one who receives it-our Lord is ruling in his church on earth by his Holy Spirit. And the one who bucks against it and rejects it, he is working judgment against them, handing them over to their sinful desires, actively working. And to those who hear it and receive it, he is working everlasting salvation.
The cross of Christ is foolishness to the Greek and to the Jew, but for those who are being saved it is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18, 24). We need this truth concerning the world's unbelief preached to the end of the world.
And so the Spirit will preach this truth and the Spirit will continue also to preach concerning righteousness. He will continue to convict the world of the truth that no creature could make satisfaction for our sins; only Christ, true God and man, could do that. The truth that only Christ's going to the Father to offer up his perfect life, innocent suffering and death, and his blood that's far more precious than gold and silver-offering it up before the Father's face-only that can do us any good.
That is the righteousness that the Spirit comes to preach to the world. He comes to say, “You are an unbeliever by nature. This is your chief sin. There is nothing good in your flesh. You can do no good thing, no work of righteousness that will ever please God. No matter how good you think you are, your sin and unbelief will win nothing for you but eternal damnation and everlasting destruction. Your only hope is the righteousness that Christ has in himself and gains for you and gives graciously to those who trust in him. Besides that, you have no hope.” That is what the Spirit will continually preach to all the world.
The Lord sends the Holy Spirit to speak to the world concerning their unbelief, Christ's righteousness, and finally the judgment against the ruler of this world. The Holy Spirit convicts the world of the truth against the lies of that murderer and accuser who wants nothing more than the destruction of every human being for which Christ offered up his entire being. This ruler of the world presents himself as a roaring lion, a dragon, an angel of light, but the Spirit of Truth sent by the Father and the Son speaks to the world concerning the reality of this ruler and those who follow him.
The Holy Spirit tells us-first tells Saint John-“War broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, ‘Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time’” (Revelation 12:7–12).
“Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. Now when the thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea. They went up on the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them. The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:1–10).
The Spirit comes to tell the world that its ruler's days are numbered and that they will suffer the same fate as him, unless they repent.
The world will mock those who speak these Spirit-filled words of repentance. They will call you hypocrites, as if the word hypocrite meant a Christian who says sin deserves eternal damnation and then struggles with sin as a Christian. That is not what hypocrite means. A hypocrite is someone like me standing up here and saying what I just said in this sermon and going out and not really believing it in my heart. And part of what I believe in my heart is that we all still have sinful flesh and that sin damns and that the law of God is good, but that our flesh does not keep it. But they will mock you as a hypocrite.
They will scoff at signs along the interstate like, “Go to church or the devil will get you.” There's a sign like that in my home state in Alabama. Every time you drive to Birmingham, you see it from where I grew up. And for a while, you saw it online all the time, people making fun of it. And maybe you could make a little bit of fun of the presentation, but it is true. And it is part of that testimony of the Spirit.
No matter how many people in this world are aligned against Christ and His church, who want to say that's all bogus, they will be proven wrong in the end. That is part of the Spirit's conviction of this world, that no matter what you might say, no matter what arguments you might stack up against the truth of God, you will be shown to be wrong in the end. And so repent now while you still have a chance, or the devil will get you.
No matter how the unbelieving world may boast against you and the truth of the Spirit given through the Scriptures, they will be proven wrong in the end. The ruler of this world has already been judged (John 16:11). There is no accusation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). By the blood of Jesus, he's already been cast out and cannot accuse you who trust in Christ. You are perfect and complete in Him by faith.
Your Lord may not be sitting visibly on a throne here and now for the world to see, but He is ruling. He is sending His Spirit to rule and bring His kingdom. And that Spirit is declaring to you all that belongs to the triune God. He is declaring to you that truth. No matter what you look around at and see and experience in this world, the truth is that you lack nothing. That you're sons of God by faith (Galatians 3:26). That you are wherever Christ is, and He is seated at the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1). That you have all that you need, whether you're sitting all by yourself in the pews in your church, or you're surrounded by thousands of people. Whether everybody is getting along or not, you have all that you need.
That is part of that truth He is declaring to you.
The Holy Spirit, sent by the Son of God, eternally in the bosom of the Father, has declared to you what you need, what He has given and will give continually, and who in the end will face judgment. For a little while, we won't see this with our eyes, but very soon the entire world-believers and the unbelievers living in this world, and those unbelievers that are of this world-will see just how true the preaching of the Holy Spirit has always been, in just a little while (John 16:16; 1 John 2:17).
Let us pray. Lord God, heavenly Father; through your Son you promised us your Holy Spirit, that he will convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. Enlighten our hearts, that we may confess our sins, obtain eternal righteousness through faith in Christ and hold on to this comfort in all our trials and temptations, that Christ is Lord over the devil and death and all things and that he will graciously deliver us out of all our afflictions and make us forever partakers of eternal salvation; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
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