Cantate—The Spirit’s Sermon: Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment
Transcribed by TurboScribe.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In 2 Corinthians 3, 17-18, the Holy Spirit teaches us through Saint Paul that the Holy Spirit is Lord, the true and living God, Yehovah. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. In John 6, 63, the Lord Jesus teaches that the Spirit is the giver of life. It is the Spirit who gives life.
The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life. In today's Gospel, the Lord Jesus teaches us another very important truth concerning the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, the true and living God.
The Lord teaches us that the Holy Spirit is a person. Jesus says, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away.
For if I do not go away, 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.
These words teach us for certain that the Holy Spirit is not merely an ethereal energy or life force like something out of Star Wars. The Holy Spirit isn't just a cloud of smoke that fills up a place and gives us goosebumps or makes our hearts pound. The Holy Spirit isn't that nice, warm, fuzzy feeling that my Mormon friends who visit every once in a while will speak of when they tell me that they felt the Holy Spirit in our conversation because I happened not to ask a hard question that day.
And then the very next time, if something awkward comes up, next time you're like, we didn't feel like the Holy Spirit was really in that conversation. That's not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit isn't a stimulus you experience when you go to a church and just feel deep down that that is where you should be, regardless of what was actually preached and taught in the rites, the words that were spoken or sung, in the sermons, or in the hymns.
The Holy Spirit is not an energy. The Holy Spirit is a person. He is a divine person.
We know that he is a person and not some force floating around in the ether because Jesus tells us today that when he sent the Holy Spirit, he sent a preacher. He sent a preacher to preach a sermon. Energy doesn't preach a sermon.
A person preaches a sermon. The Holy Spirit is a preacher. He is a person.
He is the third person of the Holy Trinity. The one true and living God. Jesus tells us today that the Holy Spirit has been sent to convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.
He's been sent to convict the world. Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit not to float around quietly, giving you goosebumps, making you pass out, or causing you to speak in made-up gibberish. Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to preach to you words that you can understand.
To convict, to bring to light, to expose, to set forth, convince, reprove, and correct. To do all this as God preaching to us in audible and comprehensible words. That's the Holy Spirit.
A preacher. A person. The Holy Spirit works now in the church convicting each one of us concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.
The Holy Spirit must preach to us first concerning sin because we've got to understand that we have a dire problem before we will hunger and thirst for any sort of solution to that problem. The Holy Spirit must first preach the law to show us that we have not believed in Christ. Because the Lord has written the law of God on our hearts, we've got a sense of right and wrong.
Even someone who professes to be an unbeliever has this sense of right and wrong. And if they're honest, they have a sense in themselves that they don't live up to even their own moral standard. Scripture tells us in Romans 2, whenever Gentiles who do not have the law written on tablets of stone or in the scriptures other places, when they do by nature what the law requires, even though they do not have the law, they are a law for themselves.
They demonstrate the work of the law that is written in their hearts since their conscience also bears witness as their thoughts go back and forth, at times accusing or at times even defending them. Another way of thinking about what I just read to you is that you know someone has a sense of right and wrong, has the law of God written on their hearts, believes that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves because they're either going to accuse other people of wrongdoing or their selves, or they're going to excuse from wrongdoing others or themselves. They're either going to say that is wrong.
Killing civilians in a war, that is wrong. Even an atheist is going to tell you that. They're going to say that is wrong.
On the other hand, maybe one day they're going to say you're telling them that something they're doing, like living with their boyfriend or girlfriend out of wedlock is wrong, and they'll say, no, it isn't. They won't say, why are you talking to me about this? There is no objective right and wrong. They'll justify it in some way.
Christians do the same sort of thing with the wrongdoings we want to feel better about. So we either accuse or excuse, whether we be someone who has the Bible or we just have the law of God written on our hearts. We're showing our hand when we talk this way, either talking about something being right or wrong, or explaining why something is right or wrong.
But this only gets you so far. We need God to tell us in Holy Scripture just how deep a corruption exists in our nature, how deep sin and unbelief go in us. We need David by the Holy Spirit to tell us words like he does in Psalm 51.
Certainly I was guilty when I was born. I was sinful when my mother conceived me. So not just you when you have an idea in your head of right and wrong, but from very conception, you are guilty.
You need salvation from that guilt, even in the womb. We need St. Paul by the Holy Spirit in Romans 5 to tell us just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, so also death spread to all people, not certain people of certain human development, not certain people of certain cognitive capabilities, all people. Death spread to all people because all sinned.
The Holy Spirit must convict us concerning the sins that we have actually committed against God in our neighbor. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. It must also convict us of original sin.
We must be taught by the Holy Spirit through the Bible that since the fall of Adam, all people who are born in the natural way are conceived and born in sin. This means that from birth, they are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature possess true fear of God and true faith in God. That's all of us apart from the Holy Spirit working in us.
Apart from the Holy Spirit working faith in us, we are without fear of God, without trust in God, and with that evil lust and inclination called concupiscence, a big Latin word that means evil lust and inclination. And even this lust and inclination for sinful things is sin. Since this is nothing other than coveting, anyone who says that concupiscence isn't sin, or you might hear someone say, it's not wrong to want to do something sinful or to be attracted to someone you shouldn't be attracted to.
It's just wrong to act on it. If you hear something like that, that's someone who doesn't believe concupiscence is sin. Anyone who wants to say something like this has to grapple with what the scriptures say, what the Holy Spirit preaches in Romans 7, 7. What will we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not.
On the contrary, I would not have recognized sin except through the law. For example, I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet the Latin Vulgate. And I'm saying the Latin Vulgate, a quotation of this same verse, because concupiscence is from Latin.
It says it this way. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. But I had not known sin except through the law.
For I had not known concupiscence unless the law had said, do not have concupiscence. So anyone who wants to say concupiscence isn't a sin is going to have to also say coveting is not a sin. We must be convinced by the Spirit's preaching that this same innate disease and original hereditary inherited sin is truly sin and condemns us to God's eternal wrath.
All who are not in turn born anew through baptism in the Holy Spirit. That is our state apart from the Holy Spirit working in us through the means of grace. What we have in store for us unless we're born anew and brought to saving faith is eternal wrath.
The Spirit must also preach to us concerning sin in this regard. He must make us understand our constant need for Christ to come to us and take away our sin and unbelief. Not just original sin and the sins you've committed in the past, but even as a Christian who has received the Holy Spirit, the sins you still commit daily, even the Holy Spirit must preach to you and convict you concerning these sins as well.
In explaining the petition, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. A church father and pastor who was martyred for the Christian faith in 258, Cyprian says this, Lest anyone be self-satisfied, thinking himself innocent and should perish once again because of his boasting, he is informed and instructed daily that he is a sinner being commanded to make prayer daily on account of his sins. So John counsels in his letter, if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
If, however, we make confession of our sins, the Lord is faithful and just and forgives our sins. In his letter, both parts are included. That is that we should implore on account of our sins and that we should obtain pardon in asking.
Therefore, he says that God is faithful in forgiving sins for he faithfully keeps the promise that he has made that the Father's mercy and pardon would come to us who make our prayers on account of our debts and sins. So the Spirit preaches to us first to convince us how we have sinned against God and continue to sin daily and to show us how desperately we need someone to do something about this. Once he has convinced us of our sin and our need for salvation, the Holy Spirit must preach to us about righteousness because Christ has gone to the Father and we see him no more.
When Jesus speaks of going away to the Father, he is first speaking about going away to the Father in his death. The Lord Jesus must go to the Father in this way to put away our sins forever. The gifts and sacrifices offered under the old covenant even the day of atonement were not able to clear the conscience of the worshipper of those participating in these things.
It wasn't able to do this. They could not ultimately do away with original sin and guilt or with actual sins committed by the people. They had to be done over and over again and they only could make the flesh clean.
But in Hebrews, it's written, Hebrews 9, but when Christ appeared as the high priest of the good things that were coming, he went through the greater and more complete tent, which was not made by human hands, that is, it is not part of this creation. He entered once into the most holy place and obtained eternal redemption, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood. Now, if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who were unclean, sanctifies them so that their flesh is clean, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we worship the living God.
For this reason, he is the mediator of a new covenant. A death took place, a departure to the father took place as payment for the trespasses committed under the first covenant so that those who are called would receive the promised eternal inheritance to us who were called. Now that Christ has gone to the father as high priest and spotless sacrificial victim, we have the answer to our own sin and unbelief once for all.
For Jesus Christ is the propitiation for all our sins. That is the satisfaction of God's wrath over our sins and not ours only, but the sins of the whole world. So that means if his blood and death do away with God's wrath for the whole world's sins, then he most certainly has done away with God's wrath toward just your sins.
They're a trifle compared to that. It's a certainty. The Spirit's preaching.
He preaches to us that Christ has put away every single one of your sins in his precious blood by his going away to the father in the death of his cross. But he does not just go to the father in death as sacrifice for sin because if you're still awake, hallelujah, Christ is risen. As our great high priest, our Lord Jesus goes away to the father as the firstborn from the dead and the same wounds that he presented to his disciples when he said peace to you are carried by him in his body to the right hand of the father.
He is there before the father's face forever holding up his nail pierced hands to his father as a sign and a reminder of that eternal covenant. The same as the rainbow reminded God that he would not destroy the world again in a flood. Jesus forever for you individually makes prayers and intercessions before his father's face and every time he asks the father to forgive your sins and to not count them against you, his father sees those wounds by which you are healed individually.
He does not just go away to the father in death. He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. He is seated at the right hand of the father interceding for you with his wounded hands.
And this leads us to the final part of the spirits preaching. If we who are by nature sinful and unclean, who sin daily and deserve temporal and eternal punishment have been purified by the precious blood of Christ in his going away to the father, if Christ has truly taken the marks, the trophies of our redemption, the marks in his hands and in his side and in his feet, if he has truly taken this before the presence of God, the father forever for us, then you and I can be convinced by the Holy Spirit's preaching concerning judgment because the ruler of this world, the devil has been judged. As soon as Satan tempted Adam and Eve to sin in the garden, he became the accuser of God's beloved human creatures.
He has accused the brethren from the beginning and he wasn't wrong. His accusation stuck. It was true that the heart of man is continually evil from his youth.
It was true that we were sinners who had no right to stand in God's gracious presence. It was true that we ought to be punished eternally for our wickedness and filth. If God is truly a just God, Satan says, yes, I rebelled.
I must be punished, but so must one all every single one of these disgusting fleshly creatures. They are rebels right alongside me. God is perfectly just.
Sin must be dealt with, but God also loves each one of you and has loved you since before the foundation of the world. He doesn't desire your death or the death of any person. And so that he could satisfy both his perfect justice and righteousness and his perfect love for us, God resolved to take away Satan's power to accuse us rightfully.
That he might be just and the justifier who has faith in Christ Jesus. This taking away of Satan's accusation against us is prophesied in Zechariah 3. You should read it when you get home and shown to be fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus in Revelation 12, which you also ought to read when you get home. Satan's accusations against those who trust in Jesus for salvation have been silenced.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. We have been clothed in Christ.
When the father sees us, he sees Christ. The devil can't point at Christ and accuse him. He knew no sin.
We have put on the armor of light by which we are able to repel every fiery dart of the devil. Now salvation and strength in the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brethren who accused them for our God day and night has been cast down and they overcame him by the blood of the lamb. Christ has chained the devil by his death and resurrection, but the devil still prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
He still tries to accuse you and cause you to doubt your standing before God as a beloved son, which you truly are by the blood of Jesus. He is like a rabid animal who knows it's about to die, furiously flailing about trying to cause as much damage as possible before he is thrown into the lake of fire forever. But now, today, you have heard the spirit's sermon concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment.
When Satan or when Satan uses the unbelieving world or uses your sinful flesh to accuse you, you can say, yes, I know I am a sinner. I know I deserve God's wrath and displeasure and eternal damnation. But I also know that my Lord Jesus has gone to the Father for me.
He died for me and he shed his blood for me on the cross. He has borne away every single one of my sins in his own body on the tree. And he also rose from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father for me.
Yes, I know I'm a sinner, but I also know that Jesus stands there before his Father praying for me at all times. There isn't a single moment when the Father isn't looking at his son's wounds. His beloved son suffered to save me from all my sins.
There isn't a single moment when the Father is not reminded of that new and eternal covenant he made in his son's wounds and holy blood. He will never leave me or forsake me. You tell him that and let this preaching that has convinced you of your own salvation be the same sermon that proclaims to the devil that he has been judged.
Tell him his accusations are powerless. Tell him that he will be thrown into everlasting fire very soon and that you'll be taken by the holy angels to rest in the arms of Jesus forever while he burns for all eternity. Tell him it's true.
Remember the Spirit's preaching to you and pick it up as a shield to repel his fiery darts and as a sword to silence that ancient dragon. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. His time is short.
For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Alleluia, Christ is risen. Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, concerning the office of your Holy Spirit, we hear from you that he will convict the world, concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. We perceive also in ourselves that your Holy Spirit has much to correct, convict, and bind in our hearts, consciences, yea, in our bodies and souls. We beseech you, therefore, O faithful Savior, that your Spirit be sent and imparted to us for our benefit, that he destroy all unbelief, false righteousness, and the irksome judgment of the world by which our flesh, blood, and weak consciences are often vexed.
Grant us to hold fast to the comfort of what you say, namely, that the prince of this world is judged. For we conclude from this that because the prince is judged, it follows that the world, with all its might and horde, cannot overcome us and your Christendom, and that the wicked foe shall have no part in us or your elect on the last day. For you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.
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