Sunday School | Red Letter Word

Introduction

What we're going to do this morning is begin a new series. We have been studying the life of David, I don't know for how long. I mean, how long? At least a year. Right? I feel like it's been forever. And we're done. So no more David. If anybody mentions David in my presence, I'll just go walk away from you. Okay? Instead, what we're gonna do is I'm gonna start a new series that you're gonna help me build, and I'm calling it Stuff Jesus Said. Red Letters, Stuff Jesus Said.

Here's the deal. Jesus is known, he's been known for millennia for being one of the greatest teachers in the history of the world. In Matthew 7, it says that the crowds were amazed at his teaching. Do you remember why? What they said? They were amazed at his teaching. Why? Because he spoke with authority. He taught as one who had authority and not as their teachers of the law.

In Matthew 13, it says, coming to his hometown, he began teaching in the synagogue, and they were amazed. Matthew 22, when Jesus taught about the resurrection from the dead and the life and the world to come, it said the crowds heard him and were astonished at his teaching. They finally reached a point because so many of the people that were listening to Jesus teach did not like him, and they were trying to, you know, they're always trying to trap him. Hey, Jesus. What about this? They'd quiz him. And the whole point was always to catch him and to prove that he was a fraud or to put him in a tangle, and they never could do it.

They finally reached the point where they didn't dare to ask him any more questions because every trap they set, he would just turn back on them. The dude was just a genius at words, and he delighted his followers, not just with his miracles, which people like the free food, but they were delighted with the things that he said.

He taught in the temple courts, which is to say in the official elite academic circle, he taught to large crowds that were gathered on hillsides. He would teach in the synagogues, and he very often would speak to his disciples just while they're walking down a path, just drawing lessons from like, know, look at the fields. Right? I tell you, not even Solomon was dressed like this. And he would just take whatever was going on, and he would relate it to what was happening, what he wanted his followers to understand.

He not only taught large gathered crowds, but he would often teach to frightened, furtive individuals. Right? He didn't require us to say, hey, it's not worth my—there are people that they're not gonna speak unless, you know, there's at least 500 people because it's really not worth their time. But Jesus would send time late at night with one guy. Right? On a, on a, on a he would spend time on a thirsty noontime well with one woman. Right? Sometimes, there wasn't often, he was straightforward, and you knew exactly what he meant. Usually, though, he communicated in complex designed to sneak past your defenses so that you would let it in. Got her? All good. Don't you hate that moment? The unicorn is good. Alright.

The Teaching Style of Jesus

So he would tell these stories, and the stories what would happen is you'd hear the story, and they were sneaky, they were—they were subversive because you would let the story in and grant the truthfulness of the tale, and then while you're walking home, realize, oh, wait a minute. That story was about me. But by then it was too late. They were—they were Trojan horses, and they didn't spring on you until it was too late.

Sometimes Jesus would use parables to reveal things, to make clear something, but he often taught parables to conceal things, which is so enigmatic. Like, teachers, like, want to be understood, but you know why? He would hide the message. He would put it specifically in a way that you would not be able to understand it. Right? And the purpose there was that he would hide things from those that weren't willing to do the work, that weren't willing to lean in. He would hide. It was a—it was a game of hide and seek. He would hide. When you're playing hide and seek, why do you hide? So people will come find you. And he would communicate in a way to say, come and find me. Come and find me.

He taught a lot about the kingdom. That is a topic we're gonna have to explore because it was on his lips constantly, especially in Matthew's gospel. It's a major theme. He would often teach the Old Testament scriptures. In fact, it seems that he took a particular delight in explaining and bewildering people with Old Testament passages. He would love to say, hey, do you ever notice that the Old Testament says this? And he would, he would do some turn of the phrase, and people would be like, you know, I never noticed that. How curious. Right? He loved to do that.

He taught on his way to Jerusalem where he knew that he was going to die, and he taught frequently on the way to Jerusalem that he was going to die. There are numerous occasions where he spoke about his impending death. And then, in a crazy scene after he died, he taught a whole bunch of second-tier disciples that the entire Old Testament was about him. It's this astonishing moment where he is explaining to this group that they're disciples, but they're not among the 12, and he explains to them that he is hidden but present all throughout the scripture.

What's kind of bonkers about that is that in that very moment, he was hidden but present. They didn't know it was him. They thought he was dead, and they didn't recognize him. He was hidden and present while explaining that he's always been hidden and present, which I think gives us some reason to be hopeful that perhaps he remains hidden and yet present. It was a major theme of his teaching.

The Core of Jesus' Teaching on the Spirit

John 5, he says, you diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me.

Some people were delighted by his teaching. They were amazed. They were astonished. They came to hear more. But everywhere he went, all throughout Judea, the crowds were stirred up, and very often in very negative ways. When he taught, he brought division, he brought dissension, people were divided over him, and in fact, some of the time, his teachings were so difficult that the crowds would leave in droves.

And what's the craziest thing about it is when that happened, when he says he starts to say things and the crowd's like, woah, enough. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. He would never say, no. No. No. You don't understand. No. Come back. Come back. He would just like turn the knife. He was never afraid to drive people away, and you'll see it happen.

John 6, if you just want to give an example, can go look, you can see it there. And even though some of the people would leave in droves, crowds would just walk away. Still, others found his teaching difficult but said to him, where else are we gonna go? For you alone have the words of eternal life.

Those words, those red letters, all Jesus taught was unoriginal. Did you know that? He lets us into this little secret. He says, listen, everything I'm saying to you, I heard from the Father. He's like, I don't ever say anything that he didn't tell me to say. We think of him as an original communicator. He was not. He was imitating his Father. He says, all I ever do is repeat what he said to me. And I think that might be why Jesus expected, in fact, Jesus demanded that those who love him would obey his teaching. He did not intend to be merely inspiring or interesting, but commanding. And his teaching demands obedience.

In fact, Jesus says that our obedience to him is proof of what? That we love him. He says, if you love me, you will obey my commands. And it necessarily follows that our disobedience is evidence that we do not love him, at least not in that moment, and at least not more than we love something else. Have you noticed that? His words are weighty, and what we do with them matters.

Not only was his teaching weighty, but his teaching led inexorably to his agonizing death. Matthew 26 says, when Jesus finished saying all these things, the chief priests and elders of the people plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. And Mark 11 says, the chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this, and they began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

In Luke 19, every day he was teaching at the temple while the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the leaders were among the people trying to kill him. The red letters bring life to us, but they brought death to him. And still, he said hard to a lot of what he said was hard. Some of it was hard to understand. Some of it was hard to accept. Some of it is hard to obey.

Mark Twain, you might know, famously quipped that it's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that trouble me, it's the parts that I do understand that trouble me. To which I say, Amen, buddy. Like, I get it. Right? Some of this is hard.

The Challenge of Jesus' Words

So here's what I want you to do. I'd like you to get out your cell phone and go to menti.com. And when you get there, can you see those tiny numbers up top? Let me read them to you. Go to menti.com and you have the opportunity to enter eight numbers. And those numbers you need to enter are 54524397. 54524397. Is it working? Is it not working for anybody? Is it working for some? Menti.com? Okay. 54524397. I should have made a giant slide with those numbers, and I forgot, too. 54524397. Anybody having trouble? Is it working? Who's having trouble? So you just can't get on at all? So maybe, yeah, if you maybe turn off your Wi-Fi. You might be better off just with straight AT&T because if suddenly we're dumping whatever you are, 200 people into the system, it'll jack it up. So maybe turn off your Wi-Fi and go back to it. Okay? So your data should get you in. And here's what we're doing. Is just a useful kind of tool for kind of interchanging information. What I want to ask you to do—Q and A.

Do I need to do something? Do I—why are there no hearts being displayed? I forgot about that. You guys love that. Are you able to do—I need to do anything now to make it work? Can you what I want you to do—can you guys type me a note, send me a question? Is everything okay? Let me see if they're coming. Let's see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Good. We're gonna start getting them.

So here's what I want you to do. Okay? You're gonna help me build this class. You can, in your note to me, and you can do this today, you can do this tonight, you can do this in a week. Right? Anytime. This is just available to you, but you'll need to have that number. 54524397. What I want you to do is help me build a list of the red letter passages that we're gonna look at. Okay?

You can do it like this. You can describe to me, hey, you know that place where the thing happens? Describe a scene. Right? Just give me some reasonable guess. I don't know where it is, but there's some place where Jesus has this conversation with this woman, and there's this other person, and she's bleeding, and what is the deal? Like, that's fine. We'll figure out what you're talking about. You could give me a semi-clear title of a parable. Explain to me the story about, like, the king coming into war, and then there's the other king, there's a bunch of troops, and what's going on with that. Or you could chapter and verse it and say, hey, walk me through, you know, Matthew 14. What is happening in that moment? Whatever. However you wanna do it. I don't care.

And then not only can you give me your suggestions, but it should be that you can see other people's questions as well. And there's a way that you can go—you can just upvote them. And so in this manner, you'll be able to suggest to me the topics you're curious about, the things you wanna look at, and then I'm gonna add my own. And then we'll just with a combination of your questions, your passages, things that I think are important, we'll we'll take a look, and we'll just kinda build it out.

I will tell you, I'll pick from your list my priorities. Well, this won't be comprehensive. Okay? Like, Jesus said a lot of things. We have a lot of words, and we're not gonna be able to cover them all. And I'm sure we won't even be able to cover everything that you necessarily mentioned, but I do wanna be influenced by what's of interest to you.

As I do, I will prioritize three broad categories. Okay? First thing that is of interest to me here is I wanna look at the most difficult passages we can. Jesus was an enigmatic communicator. And so I wanna, like, kinda bring to the head of the line some of the passages, some of the parables, some of the moments that are just weird. Right? It always drives me insane. We do—we'll do scripture readings here on a Sunday morning, and sometimes I'm like, god, that thing just begs for explanation. And then we just kind of move right on. Right? And so, like, relatively recently, the passage was included Luke 16, which is the parable that Jesus tells a story, and the punch line is like, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that you'll enter into eternal dwellings. And you're like, what are you talking about? Right? So things like that. Things that when you read them, you're like, God is my witness. I have no idea what you meant by that. We're gonna promote those. Right? I also want to make sure that we look at—and this is gonna be a little dicier—I want to look at the things that we're the most eager to ignore because there's some things that Jesus said that were like, turn the page. Right? You know this. Right? Things like his painfully clear prohibition on divorce in Mark 10 and in Matthew 19. That will be uncomfortable for many people here. Alright? Many Christians have just chosen not to obey what Jesus said about divorce. Okay? Take it. Okay? Just receive this. It is Jesus. He loves you. He is for you. He is gracious to you. But let's hear what he says. Okay? And let's not be—it's very easy to, like, look at people who ignore the parts of the Bible they don't like without recognizing that there are parts of the Bible that we don't like. So let's look at them. Alright? Let's just be honest. Let's have men and women of integrity. And then I want to try to sort up to the top what are maybe some of the most important things that he said. That's going to be hard because it's all kind of important. Right? And who am I to know, like, are the three most important—well, I don't know. But there are passages, like, think in John 17 where Jesus says that the Father loves Jesus in the same way that the Father loves Anna. Like, what? It's astonishing. Let's look. John 17 is just—it's incredible. Right? Could it be? Is it possibly true that he loves you the same way that he's loved his eternal son with whom he is one? I'm like, that's amazing. Right? We wanna understand that.

Or maybe John 3 is this crucial text, the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, is where Jesus is explaining, How do we obtain eternal life? That's a question worth understanding. What's he saying there? What is he drawing from? How does that work? So we'll look at the weird stuff that's super hard to understand. We'll look at the stuff that we don't like. It's very uncomfortable. We'll look at the most important things. And I think it's gonna be incredibly fun. And we'll do this for exactly as many weeks as we feel like it. Right? So we'll just kinda—and I'm sure that some weeks maybe we'll look at one passage. Some weeks we'll look at lots and lots of passages. And I will go home after today. Right now, we got—looks like 20. So let's just see what we got. So real quick, just skim through here. Can you skim through on your phones and see the whole list? I think you can. Right? So no hearts. Okay. I don't know. Didn't turn off the hearts, but I should have. So it's good.

Looking at John 16

Okay. Jesus equating our deeds to our salvation in Matthew 25. Yeah. Okay. So that's Jesus—we have your good evangelicals, and you know that we're saved by faith and not by works. But there's a bunch of times that Jesus is like, hey. Do a good job, you get to go to heaven. Like, what? What does that mean? Okay. That's really important.

John 6, this is my body. Why not take him literally? The crowds—the crowds seem to have done that. Okay. So we can talk about maybe not just in that John 6, but communion. This is a question about transubstantiation. We can talk about that. Depart from me, never knew you. Yeah. That's one of those tough ones. If you deny me—yeah. We can talk about deconstruction.

Jesus gave—did Jesus give a case for annihilationism and not eternal conscious torment? Fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. There's a question about the nature of hell. Matthew 10. Let's see.

John 6, can we obey unless he gives us faith? No, we can't. Does it mean to eat well? Okay, great. More of the flesh. You guys are all—you got a Catholic contention in here today? What's going on? Okay. We'll talk about that. Jesus in the desert. What about what Jesus didn't say in the red letters but Paul said? Okay. We're not gonna do that. Not today. We're gonna—or not this seat. We're gonna do specifically in Jesus' words. But I imagine there'll be many times that we look to the rest of the Bible because the things that Jesus said get explained by his people.

Lazarus, John 11. Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. A whole bunch of stuff. Okay. So I'll go through. I'll filter through and try to come up with some sequence in some organization, and we'll jump in. Okay? So, again, you can go back. There's some way. I don't know what it is offhand, but you can upvote things. We'll sort them all out. We'll try to pick the biggies, and we'll do it for six weeks or eight weeks or thirty weeks. I don't know. We'll take it as it comes.

Final Instructions and Wrap-up

Okay? Got where we're going? Alright. So let's do one now. This week I was reading John 16. Where are we? Did we do this, Don, already? Did we? Yeah. We've been—we've been saying John forever. There's a passage in John 16, and then we'll look at it right now. So go to John 16. And I don't know if you have this phenomena. There's a there's a thing that Jesus says in John 16 that when I read it, I don't know what he's saying. It just doesn't—I don't get it. So then I go and I read some commentaries, and then I get to like, oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. I get it. I get it. I understand what you mean now. And then, like, I come across it, like, three months later, and I'm like, what did you mean about this? It just doesn't stick. This is one of those passages. I would rank this in, like, probably the top five most difficult to intuit passages.

So we're gonna—we'll start here. Okay? And then we'll see if we can figure out—and I think there's a chance that I remember what this means now. But I know that I have looked at it over and over, and it just leaks out of my brain. And I hate it when stuff leaks out of my brain. So here's the text. You ready? We're in John 16, and we'll pick it up. We're talking about the Holy Spirit. John 16, you might know, has lots to teach about the spirit, the Holy Spirit. And Jesus says we'll start verse 7. 16:7. He says, but I tell you the truth, it's for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

And when he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment, in regard to sin because men do not believe in me, in regard to righteousness because I'm going to the father where you can see me no longer, and in regard to judgment because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

Closing

Okay? Now, let's take the only thing I really wanted to do—the rest of this morning, give—I want to give you guys time to answer, you know, to submit your questions. And so if you wanna zone out and ignore me and try to find that passage in the gospels that you wanna ask me about, that's fine. No problem. No problem at all. You have all the permission in the world. You can knit whatever you're into. Right? Just do your thing.

Okay? So, so, so while I'm stalling for time, so you can come up with questions, I will explain John 16 to those of you that are curious what the heck is going on here. Okay? But really, sincerely, like, my priority is I want to give you guys the window of opportunity to ask a question.

So describe it. I don't care how you do it. You can find it. Alright? Now, John 16. This verse, here's the heart of it. When he comes, the spirit—verse 8. When he comes, the spirit will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. Okay? So relatively straightforward, this pharaoh is going to come, he's going to do something, namely, convict the world, and he's going to do so in regard to three things: sin and what? Righteousness? Judgment. And judgment. Okay.

Did I say sin and guilt and judgment when I just read that? Did I say it right? I said it right. Okay. Because in my brain, did I hear a weird echo? Sin and righteousness and judgment. So the first level of this is like, what do you mean by sin? What do you mean by righteousness? And what do you mean by judgment? And I suspect that our default assumptions about two of those are probably wrong. Like, when I read it, I read it assuming that I know what words mean, and I think that we're wrong on two of them. And then—and that's gonna set us off in a bad way. And then he clarifies, and he's like, in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me, and I'm like, okay. I might know what you mean by that, but that's a little tenuous. And then in regard to righteousness, because I'm going to the father, to which I think, what? Like, what does your going to the father have to do with convicting the world of—I don't understand. Like, you try and explain yourself, but it didn't help me. And then in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. And I'm like, I'm not sure I get that bridge. So there's first, what do these three things mean? And then there's, like, your explanatory clause for each of these three things.

I don't follow your—am I, you get it? Is it, does any—is this crystal clear to anybody in this room? Okay. It feels weird. Right? Okay. So I've read this. I've studied this. I've read what other people have said about it. I've stared at it. And then I get to the point where I've pushed that rock up the hill, and then it just rolls right back down. And I'm like, oh, shoot. I still don't know what you're talking about. So I'm going to try to make it so that it's clear to all of us. Okay?

Clarifying Sin, Righteousness, and Judgment

Sin, righteousness, and judgment. Let's talk about those three things first. Don't worry about the connection clause. Just what does he mean, Daniel, when he says, I'm gonna convict the world of sin? What does he mean, I'm gonna convict the world of righteousness because I wanna con people are convicted of bad things. Righteousness is a good thing, so that's just weird right out of the gate. And convict the world of judgment, I don't even know where to go with that. Okay? So what do you think he means when he says sin? Again, don't worry about the second half. Just what do these three terms mean? He will convict the world of sin. What does that mean? Or maybe we should even back up. What does it mean that the Holy Spirit is gonna convict the world? Because that could have—it could go in a couple different directions. What does it mean? Stewart? Okay. So there's something here. So we're gonna—so he's gonna convict the world. So when you think of the word the world, the word convict, there's two main senses that we could use that. One is, I'm the judge, I hammer the gavel down, and I declare you guilty. You were convicted of a crime. Right? That's not what's going on here. Okay? It's the other version, which is what? What's the other possibility to say that the Holy Spirit is convicting you? Revealing. Revealing. Revealing the truth, like what Stuart is saying, or speaking to your heart. It's like making you feel bad. Right? So usually we say, I'm feeling convicted. It's like, shoot, my conscience has been turned on. Or I'm experiencing a, like, the proper degree of shame. Or I feel bad that I did. Right? That's the sense. So what he's gonna do is when the Holy Spirit comes, one of his jobs is to, like, amp up the Jiminy Cricket within you. Right? And to make you be like, I shouldn't have done that thing. Right? Now, Michael, I didn't call on you. Did you wanna jump in? Am I hitting what you're saying? Okay. So this is what it means. And so he's gonna—he's gonna, like, he's gonna provoke the conscience of who? The world. Meaning? Us and? Him. And them. Okay. That's good. That's it's comprehensive. Right? So he is describing it. It's not just something he's gonna do for the church. Generally, John uses the word world in a diverse—what's happening? My computer's doing something. Hang on. In a diverse set of ways, you've been signed out. Why? Did it just break? Well, I don't know why I got signed out. You know what that means? That means my wife just opened her computer and when she—when she did, is back? Oh, maybe she closed her computer. Okay. So what? What was I saying? Convict. Okay. So he's gonna—he's gonna make who he's gonna make—it's the word. John sometimes uses "world" to represent everybody, and sometimes it's just— but it's often a sense of like we are not of the world, we are in the world. Okay? I think in this context, it means everybody. But in particular, the Holy Spirit is gonna come and is gonna make non-Christians feel bad about their sin and their righteousness and their judgment, which we'll get to those in a second. Okay? So, Michael? So was there no guilt over sin prior to that? I don't—I don't believe that there was no guilt over sin. So the Holy Spirit, it seems, at least in my life, that he is a magnifier, an amplifier. Right? And so I am—we, in the same way that, like, the devil can compel me to do bad things, my flesh can also just do bad things without anybody helping. Right? Right? Well, that same principle, the Holy Spirit can come and he can convict me externally and lean on me, but God has built into us. We bear his image, and we have a conscience that's, like, a part of the natural apparatus. Right? So he comes on and he kinda, like, pushes, puts his thumb on the scale. And he does this thing to convict us, to make us feel bad about the sin that we've committed. Okay? Catherine. Yeah. Yes. This is this is—Yes. It is. Very much so. And the spirit, when he comes, he's gonna magnify this sense—he's gonna convict it, make us feel bad, make the world feel bad, make the non-Christians feel bad about our sin. Okay? Now, when we say sin, this is the simple one. It's what you think it means. Okay? When he says convict the world of sin, it's like the bad things that you do. Okay? That one's simple. We're not gonna spend any more time. It's straightforward. It's the easy. Convict the world of righteousness—that's more tricky. What do you think that means if the Holy Spirit is gonna come and convict the world of quote righteousness? Chris? Not here, not yet. We're gonna get to the faith in Christ that flows. He's gonna talk about connect that with sin. But when he says righteousness, I'm gonna put righteousness in scare quotes. Okay? Nancy? Self. That's it. Self. Righteousness. This is what—this is what he's saying. Okay? And I—I think I can prove this to you in a minute. But just hold me. Just—just hold it for a second. Okay? When the spirit comes, he's gonna say, hey, hey, hey. You're doing bad stuff. That's gonna convict us of our sin. But he's also gonna convict us—would be—it would be a little bit more helpful to us to hear of our self-righteousness. The Bible is pretty consistently our righteous deeds are in fact, our righteous acts are not that impressive. They're impressive to me, I am impressive to me, and you are impressive to you. But the spirit needs to come alongside us and be like, yo, you're not that impressive. It's really not as great. You're being very selective in your sense of yourself. Okay? So it's sin, as you think of—it's self-righteousness in that category, and then judgment. What do you think convict the world of judgment means? What is it, Katherine? There is a consequence for your sin. Okay. So now now, no, but that's what I think it means too. That's our default sense of you're gonna convict the world of judgment. But every one of these things, here's the hint. If the spirit is convicting you of it, it's bad. So we gotta—we gotta have a definition for sin that is bad, a definition of righteousness that is bad, and a definition of judgment that is bad. Sin is straightforward. Righteousness is self-righteousness. Judgment is, Suzanne? Judging others. That's it. Okay? So where you see judgment, just think judginess. Okay? Think about the fact that we walk through the world all the time looking down our noses at all those sinners. Okay? And the Holy Spirit, when he comes, he's gonna go after the fact that you do bad stuff. He's gonna go after the fact that you rate yourself so highly, and he's gonna go after the fact that you are looking down your nose at others. And on that third one, Satan, the one that you're imitating—the one that you are dressed up like—has himself been condemned, and we are not to follow in those footsteps. Make sense? Okay. So you might just—you might put in your margins sin, self-righteousness, and judginess. Those—that might be a little bit more vernacular ways to help this thing stick around and stay in your brain. Our tendency to judge others, our tendency to evaluate ourselves so highly, and the fact that when nobody's looking, we just pull all kinds of crap. Right? Those three things, Lily. That's—yeah. The sense when we say that the spirit is convicting us, it is bringing—mean, we hear in the same way—we would say you are convicted of a crime. Right? So there's the sense of it is to bring into—here's maybe there are there may be instances where that is used in a different way. But in this instance, the spirit's job is to bring us to an awareness of our need for a savior. And therefore, it is always gonna be corrective or rebuking or like, hey. Hey. Hey. Do you get yet why you need me? It's gonna be in that in that vein here in this passage. Cool?

The Words of the Spirit and Their Connection to Jesus

So what are the three things he's gonna convict the world of? Sin. Self-righteousness. Judginess. Okay. Now with that, now there's at least the possibility that we can make sense of the connections that he's going after this. Okay? So let's see. Let's take a look. He says, I'm gonna make you—I will convict the world about sin, self-righteousness, and judgmentalism, if judgy is too informal for you. And the first thing is why? Convict the world of sin because what does he say? Because people do not believe in me.

This one again, like, sin is relatively straightforward. I think this one—this is the one of the three that I'm like, okay. I get you what you're saying here. Right? What is he saying? Convict the world of sin because people don't believe in me. How does this work? You raising your hand or scratching your hand? You're scratching your hand. Okay. What do you think he means? This is the easiest one. Oh, did you want to jump in? Oh, here we go. Yeah. Jump.

Wait. You're saying that Jesus can't convince them himself, but maybe the Holy Spirit will? Is that what you're saying? Okay. Well, it's true. There's a sense in which Jesus says, like, it's for your good that I go because if I don't leave, then the Holy Spirit won't come. And then—and you're like, well, I would rather you stayed. Right? We have that sense? But when the Spirit comes, he's gonna do an internal work. And in this particular instance, that work that the Spirit is going to do is— Yep. That's right. This is the most simple and straightforward thing, that he is gonna help you see your bad and your badness and your brokenness and all this stuff. There is a solution. The only hope, the only way that we're ever gonna clean up your act is if you begin to—that has taken our badness away. And it's as we believe in the one who has taken our badness away, we actually become less sinful. First, by an act of declaration. Right? He has just he's declared us. He has imputed to us credit for his perfect life. But then he also is gonna begin to work it out so that we genuinely are slower, slower to all the things that are our default nature. It really works. As we believe in him, there's going to be this transforming effect. And that's what he's saying, is that the Holy Spirit will come and he will convict you of sin because you—why need to do this? Because people don't believe in me. As they come to believe in me, then and only then are their lives gonna be changed.

To the to the extent that you feel like Christianity is a behavior modification scheme, like, you misunderstand the gospel and it's never going to work. The only thing that makes sinful people less sinful is a relationship with Christ, that we're saved by his grace through faith. That is the solution. That's what the spirit is gonna do. It's gonna put put us in a place where having believed, we can now begin to be changed. That one's relatively straightforward. The other two, I think, are a tangled mess. Okay? So let's go to those before the clock ticks too many more times. Okay? He says this, I'm gonna convict the world of self-righteousness because I am going to the father. What? I think this is tricky. How is it that the Spirit has to come along and he has to convince us of our own self-righteousness because Jesus is going to the father? There's some logical—there's—I think we can make a case that this makes sense, but it's not this is not this is not a cookies on the bottom shelf kinda line. Are you agreed? This is weird. Chris, do you know it? Okay. This is good. Okay. Let let me kinda like hit your car a couple times. But this is right. This—this isn't the thing. If you walk around in the world and you are so pleased with yourself, right, what are you good at? Okay? Pick what? What do you, what do you use as the as the centerpiece of your self-conceit? Okay? This thing that is like, I'm the best—blank. Right? We'll pick basketball because I'm amazing at basketball. Right? Is that surprising to you? I am horrible at basketball. Okay? But if I thought that I was so great, right, and then I've got to, like, you know, take the court with who's your guy right now? You go Michael Jordan, go with LeBron, whoever your guy is. Like, I would not feel great at—well, I wouldn't feel great at basketball, I mean, with any of you. But I would feel particularly not great at basketball if Michael Jordan was on the court. Right? So whatever you're whatever you conceit yourself with, imagine that you're in the company of one who is genuinely great. K? When Jesus was on the earth, when he's walking around and there is this visible physical comparison, like, self-righteousness was so ludicrous because he's standing right there being excellent at all things. Right? Still, people were self-righteous, but it was just laughable. It was so absurd. But guess what? He's gone. And once Michael Jordan leaves the court, then you can slide back into congratulating yourself on how great you are. And because he has left, because the exemplar of everything in its fullness and beauty and magnificence is no longer here, the spirit has got to come in and be like, hey, we fuck at basketball. Okay? That's what's happening. It is because we, who think we're self-righteous, have lost the direct connection to the one who is the embodiment of real righteousness that the spirit has to like, actually, you're not nearly as patient as you congratulate yourself as being. Make sense? So he comes. He's gonna convict the world of sin because it's only through faith in Christ that we're ever gonna be cleaned up. He's gonna convict the world of self-righteousness because Jesus isn't here to be the comparison, and so the spirit has to lean in and do it for us. Make sense? And then the third one is, is he going to convict the world of what? Being judgy. Being judgmental. And what's the reason for that one? Because, well, what's the reason that Jesus gives? Yeah. Jesus stands—I mean, Satan stands condemned. His exact phrasing is, in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. The prince of this world is who? You know this, right? He's not talking about the Father. He's not talking about himself. The prince of this world is the devil of hell. When he says Satan stands condemned, and the fact that Satan stands condemned is the reason that the Holy Spirit is going to convict us of our judgmentalism, what's the linkage? Why does he convict us of our judgmentalism in light of the fact that Satan stands condemned? What's he—what's he doing with that? What do you guys think? Yeah. Chris?

Being judged, why is he being judged? Because he's not following the law. He's not looking to Christ for direction. He's specifically doing the opposite. So, therefore, if you do but a glimmer of not looking towards Jesus as to what to hold fast to, then you're gonna be judged. Okay. So it—it is it—it is true that we will be judged for our—our for not being obedient to Christ. That is absolutely true. But his invocation of Satan or—and it might help you a little bit if I say his invocation of Satan. Did you know that the Bible when we—we are—when we're introduced to Satan, it's—that's not a name. It's a title. Did you know that? Right? This is what his mean. The accuser. Right? This is what he—his very he is Javert. You guys speak—do you guys speak Les Mis? Okay. Satan is in the story of Les Mis, Javert is the Satan character. He is the accuser. He is here to heap guilt upon you. If you guys know Zechariah 3, where Joshua stands before the high priest and Satan is standing at his side, what is he doing while he stands next to Joshua? He's accusing him. Right? And then he gets rebuked. The Lord rebuke you, Satan. Is not this man of burning sticks snatched from the fire? So Satan is his job, his purpose, his—his Javert. He is here to accuse you, which sounds similar to convicting. It's a different game. He's here to accuse and to blame and to condemn, but he himself stands condemned. And when we are walking around accusing people, judging people, looking down our nose at people, we're imitating the satan. We are following in the footsteps of the accuser. We are judging. We are placing ourselves in this seat that walks around and dismisses the plebes. Right? And what Jesus is saying is when the Holy Spirit comes, he's gonna go after the fact that you do bad stuff. He's gonna go after the fact that you rate yourself so highly, and he's gonna go after the fact that you are looking down your nose at others. And on that third one, Satan, the one that you're imitating—the one that you are dressed up like—has himself been condemned, and we are not to follow in those footsteps. Make sense? Okay.

Final Clarifications

Okay. Now there are a couple of hands. Again, Michael, I keep missing you, bro. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Let me try to recap that for folks that maybe if it didn't get on the tape. So Michael is making the absolutely correct observation that one of the primary ways we can understand life change as a person becomes a follower of Christ is through the through the lens of kingdom transfer—that we once were in the domain of darkness, but we have been—we have been drawn out of this domain of darkness and into the kingdom of light. And that when we were in this kingdom, we were the way that Ephesians 2 puts it: You ever if you listen to the language of—you may have Ephesians 2 memorized. Do you have that in your brain? Right? We used to follow the ways of the world, the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. It's all kingdom language. Right? There was this kingdom. There was this ruler. There's this spirit. We lived among them, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, following its desires and thoughts. But God in his mercy has made us alive, and he's brought us into a new kingdom. Colossians is one of the primary places where you'll hear that kingdom transfer out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of light.

And Michael is, I think, observing that when we were parts of this old kingdom, we followed our old king. He was an accuser, and we were accusers. He has been condemned, and we are condemned. And now that we've left that way of being and we've stepped into this new kingdom of light, it's a whole new set of rules. Everything changes. And the way that we function, way that we live, is different. Right? And the spirit of God is coming to convict us, not just of the bad things we do and not just of the unreasonably positive way that we're functioning ourselves, but also the unreasonably negative way that we're evaluating others because we're functioning and we—in fact, the spirit may be talking to people who genuinely are members of this old domain of darkness. But we're out of that. His job is to come in and say, you know what? This is crummy. This is crummy. Your sin is bad. Your self-righteousness is bad. Your judgmentalism is bad. But take heart because there's a new way. You could believe in me. You could come to know the one who has set us free from all of that. And that's what the—that's what the spirit is doing.

Donald? Yeah. This passage ends in the present tense because the prince of this world now stands—yeah. Yeah. So what Donna's saying, so verb tenses in the in the Bible are kind of strange because so much is happening in an already—not yet. So Jesus says that the kingdom is coming. Right? Jesus says that the prince of the world stands condemned, but all those things don't really reach their climactic transition until the cross. It is on the cross—again, Colossians says that Jesus made a public he defeats Satan, makes a public spectacle of him, triumphing him over him by the cross. John 16 is pre-cross, but it's pre-cross by, like, three days. You know? It is coming. It's right here. It's almost—it's almost upon us. So I don't think Jesus—Jesus in other places, we can see very clearly that the the conviction, the condemnation, the judgment is passed on Satan on the cross. Right? And it's just here immediately upon us. Okay.

Conclusion

Alright. We gotta stop talking. So those are the three. So sin, righteousness, and judgment—if you can remember what they mean. Sin means sin. What is righteousness? Self-righteousness. What is judgment? Judginess, judgmentalism. Right? And then the connection's a little bit hard to summarize, but we—it is only in our faith in Christ that cleans up our sin. It is because the righteous one is no longer here to to convict by his very nature our self-righteousness that the Holy Spirit has to do it. And it is because the accuser is condemned that we are not to imitate him and walk around being little Satans, little accusers in our judgmental nature.

These are the things that the spirit of God does, and thank God that he does, right? That we might be—weaned away from our sin and our self-righteousness and our haughtiness, that we might find life in him. Okay? All right. That's one. We'll do a bunch more. So mentee me. It would be better that you don't email me because then I'm gonna lose scraps of paper. If this contains all of your input, then it'll help me make sure that I'm covering the stuff that's of interest to you.

All right. That's all. Thank you.