Sunday School | Red Letter Words

What we're going to do this morning is begin a new series. We have been studying the life of David for at least a year. 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.

Jesus: The Greatest Teacher

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. — Matthew 7

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 where so many of the people listening to Jesus teach did not like him, and they were 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 whatever was going on. Look at the fields:

I tell you, not even Solomon was dressed like this. — Matthew 6:29

And he would just take whatever was going on and 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 an audience of at least 500 people because it's really not worth his time. But Jesus would spend time late at night with one guy. He would spend time at a thirsty noontime well with one woman.

The Art of Jesus's Teaching

Sometimes he was straightforward, and you knew exactly what he meant. Usually, though, he communicated in complex ways designed to sneak past your defenses so that you would let it in. He would tell these stories, and the stories were sneaky, they were subversive because you would let the story in and grant the truthfulness of the tale, and then while you're walking home, you'd realize, "Oh, wait a minute. That story was about me." But by then it was too late. 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. Teachers want to be understood, but he would hide the message. He would put it specifically in a way that you would not be able to understand it. 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. 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 amount of 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 do some turn of the phrase, and people would be like, "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's 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.

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

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, sometimes his teachings were so difficult that the crowds would leave in droves.

What's the craziest thing about it is when that happened—when he starts to say things and the crowd's like, "Woah, enough. Stop. Stop. Stop."—he would never say, "No, no, no, you don't understand. Come back." He would just turn the knife. He was never afraid to drive people away, and you'll see it happen in John 6 if you want to look at an example.

And even though some of the people would leave in droves, still others found his teaching difficult, but said to him:

Where else are we going to go? You alone have the words of eternal life. — John 6

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. 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. His teaching demands obedience. In fact, Jesus says that our obedience to him is proof of what? That we love him.

If you love me, you will obey my commands.

And it necessarily follows that our disobedience is an 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.

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. — Matthew 26

And:

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. — Mark 11

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 things. 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. I get it. Some of this is hard.

Interactive Moment

So here's what I want you to do. I'd like you to get out your cell phone and go to menti.com. 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. Those numbers you need to enter are 54524397.

Is it working? Is it not working for anybody? Is it working for some? Okay, 54524397. I should have made a giant slide with those numbers and I forgot. Anybody having trouble? Who's having trouble?

If you just can't get on at all, maybe turn off your WiFi. You might be better off just with straight data because if suddenly we're dumping 200 people into the system, it'll jack it up. So maybe turn off your WiFi and go back to it. Your data should get you in.

And here's what we're doing—just a useful tool for interchanging information. What I want to ask you to do is a Q and A. Do I need to do something? 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?

What I want you to do is type me a note, send me a question. Is everything okay? Let me see if they're coming. Yes, okay. Good. We're gonna start getting them.

Building the Red Letter Passages List

So here's what I want you to do. You're gonna help me build this class. In your note to me, you can do this today, you can do this tonight, you can do this in a week—anytime. This is just available to you, but you'll need 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. You can do it like this: you can describe to me a scene. "Hey, you know that place where the thing happens? 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?" That's fine. We'll figure out what you're talking about.

Or you could give me a semi-clear title of a parable. "Explain to me the story about the king coming into war, and then there's more king, there's a bunch of troops, and what's going on with that."

Or you could chapter and verse it: "Hey, walk me through Matthew 14. What is happening in that moment?" Whatever—however you want to do it, I don't care.

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

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

Three Priorities for Selection

As I do this, I will prioritize three broad categories.

First, I want to look at the most difficult passages we can. Jesus was an enigmatic communicator. I want to bring to the head of the line some of the passages, some of the parables, some of the moments that are just weird. It always drives me insane when we do scripture readings here on a Sunday morning, and sometimes I'm like, "God, that thing just begs for explanation," and then we just move right on.

Relatively recently, the passage was Luke 16, which is the parable where Jesus tells a story, and the punch line is:

Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that you'll enter into eternal dwellings. — Luke 16

And you're like, "What are you talking about?" 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.

Second, I want to make sure that we look at—and this is gonna be a little dicier—the things that we're the most eager to ignore. There are some things that Jesus said that we just turn the page on. There's his painfully clear prohibition on divorce in Mark 10 and in Matthew 19. That will be uncomfortable for many people here. Many Christians have just chosen not to obey what Jesus said about divorce.

Take it. 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. And let's not be—it's very easy to 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. Let's just be honest. Let's have men and women of integrity.

Third, 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. Who am I to know what the three most important things are? I don't know. But there are passages—think in John 17 where Jesus says that the Father loves Jesus in the same way that the Father loves Anna. What? It's astonishing. Let's look. John 17 is just incredible.

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 want to understand that. Or maybe John 3 is this crucial text, the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, 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 going to be incredibly fun. And we'll do this for exactly as many weeks as we feel like it. So we'll just kind of—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've got looks like 20. So let's just see what we've got.

So real quick, just skim through here. Can you skim through on your phones and see the whole list? I think you can. So, no hearts. Okay, I don't know. Didn't turn off the hearts, but I should have. So it's good. Okay.

Jesus equating our deeds to our salvation in Matthew 25. Yeah, okay. So that's Jesus—we have, you're 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 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. 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 his flesh? Okay, great. More of the flesh. You guys 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 going to do that. Not today. We're going to do specifically 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.

So I'll go through, I'll filter through and try to come up with some sequence and 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. Okay? Got where we're going? Alright.

The Passage We're Looking At

So let's do one now. This week I was reading John 16. Where are we? Did we do this, Don, already? Yeah, 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, but 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 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 going to start here, okay? And then we'll see if we can figure it 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.

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. — John 16:7-11

Okay, now let's do the only thing I really wanted to do for the rest of this morning—give you guys time to answer and submit your questions. So if you want to zone out and ignore me and try to find that passage in the Gospels that you want to ask me about, that's fine. No problem. You have all the permission in the world. You can knit, whatever you're into. Just do your thing.

But 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. But really, sincerely, my priority is I want to give you guys the window of opportunity to ask the question. So describe it however you want. You can find it.

Understanding John 16:8

Now, John 16. Here's the heart of it:

When he comes, the Spirit will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. — John 16:8

Relatively straightforward—the Spirit 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, righteousness, and judgment.

The first level of this is, what do you mean by sin? What do you mean by righteousness? And what do you mean by judgment? I suspect that our default assumptions about two of those are probably wrong. When I read it, I think we're wrong on two of them. And that's going to set us off in a bad way.

Then he clarifies. He says, 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 righteousness? I don't understand. 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 your explanatory clause for each of these three things. I don't follow you. Am I getting it? Does anybody in this room get it? Does this feel clear to anybody?

It feels weird, right? 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 clear to all of us.

Sin, righteousness, and judgment. Let's talk about those three things first. Don't worry about the connection clause. Just what does he mean when he says, I'm going to convict the world of sin? What does he mean, I'm going to convict the world of righteousness? Because 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.

So what do you think he means when he says sin? Again, don't worry about the second half. What do these three terms mean? He will convict the world of sin. What does that mean? Or maybe we should back up. What does it mean that the Holy Spirit is going to convict the world? Because that could go in a couple different directions.

There's something here. When you think of the word "the world," the word "convict"—there are two main senses we could use. 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. It's the other version. What's the other possibility? To say that the Holy Spirit is convicting you is revealing the truth, like what Stewart is saying, or speaking to your heart. It's like making you feel bad. So usually we say, I'm feeling convicted. It's like, shoot, my conscience has been turned on. Or I'm experiencing the proper degree of shame. Or I feel bad that I did that thing. That's the sense.

So what he's going to do is when the Holy Spirit comes, one of his jobs is to amp up the Jiminy Cricket within you, and to make you be like, I shouldn't have done that thing. This is what it means.

And so he's gonna provoke the conscience of who? The world. Meaning us and him. And them. Okay. That's good. 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 set of ways.

[Technical interruption omitted]

So he's gonna make it—the word. John sometimes uses "world" to represent everybody, and sometimes it's just 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.

Michael, was there no guilt over sin prior to that? I don't believe that there was no guilt over sin. So the Holy Spirit, it seems, at least in my life, is a magnifier, an amplifier, right? And so we—in the same way that the devil can compel me to do bad things, my flesh can also just do bad things without anybody helping. That same principle applies: the Holy Spirit can come and he can convict me externally and lean on me, but God has built into us a conscience. We bear his image, and we have a conscience that's a part of the natural apparatus, right? So he comes on and he kind of puts his thumb on the scale. He does this thing to convict us, to make us feel bad about the sin that we've committed.

The spirit, when he comes, is 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?

Three Categories of Conviction

Now, when we say sin, this is the simple one. It's what you think it means. When he says convict the world of sin, it's like the bad things that you do. That one's simple. We're not gonna spend any more time on it—it's straightforward, it's 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?

Self-righteousness. That's it. This is what he's saying, okay? And I think I can prove this to you in a minute. But just hold it for a second. 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—it would be a little bit more helpful to us to hear—of our self-righteousness. The Bible is pretty consistently showing us that our righteous deeds 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 so fluffed up, but it's just not. You're being very selective in your sense of yourself."

So it's sin as you think of it, self-righteousness in that category, and then judgment. What do you think convict the world of judgment means? There is a consequence for your sin. Okay, but every one of these things—here's the hint: if the spirit is convicting you of it, it's bad. So 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 judging others. That's it.

So where you see judgment, just think "judginess." Think about the fact that we walk through the world all the time looking down our noses at all those sinners. And the Holy Spirit, when he comes, he's got three broad categories he's gonna have to put his thumb on. Hey. First of all, knock it off. Second of all, you're so arrogant and self-satisfied. And number three, you measure others with a different standard.

So you might just put in your margins: sin, self-righteousness, and judginess. Those 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 the sense when we say that the spirit is convicting us—it is bringing us to awareness. We hear it the same way we would say you are convicted of a crime. Right? So there's the sense of it: to bring into awareness. Here's maybe there are 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 going to be corrective or rebuking or like, "Hey. Hey. Hey. Do you get yet why you need me?" It's gonna be in that vein here in this passage.

So what are the three things he's gonna convict the world of? Sin. Self righteousness. Judginess. Now with that, now there's at least the possibility that we can make sense of the connections that he's going after this. So let's take a look.

He says, "I'm gonna 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, like sin, is relatively straightforward. I think this is the one of the three that I'm like, "Okay, I get 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're scratching your hand. Okay. What do you think he means? This is the easiest one. Oh, did you want to jump in? Yeah. Jump. You're saying that Jesus can't convince them himself, but maybe the Holy Spirit will? Is that what you're saying?

Well, it's true. There's a sense in which Jesus says, like, "It's for your good that I go away because if I don't leave, then the Holy Spirit won't come." And then 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—yeah, that's right. This is the most simple and straightforward thing: he is gonna help you see your bad and your badness and your brokenness. There is a solution. The only hope, the only way that we're ever gonna clean up your act is if you begin to believe in the one who has taken our badness away. And 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'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 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: the Holy Spirit will come and he will convict you of sin because people 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 extent that you feel like Christianity is a behavior modification scheme, 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 us in a place where, having believed, we can now begin to be changed. That one's relatively straightforward.

Self-Righteousness and Judgment

The other two, I think, are a tangly mess. So let's go to those before the clock ticks too many more times. 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 convince us of our own self righteousness because Jesus is going to the father? There's some logic here. I think we can make a case that this makes sense, but it's not a cookies on the bottom shelf kinda line. Are you agreed? This is weird. Chris, do you know it? Okay. This is good. Let me hit your car a couple times. But this is right. This is 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 are you good at? What do you use 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 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 basketball with any of you. But I would feel particularly not great at basketball if Michael Jordan was on the court. Right? So whatever you conceive yourself with, imagine that you're in the company of one who is genuinely great. When Jesus was on the earth, when he's walking around and there is this visible physical comparison, self-righteousness was so ludicrous because he's standing right there being excellent at all things. 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 suck at basketball." 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 be 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 he's going to convict the world of what? Being judgmental. And what's the reason for that one? Jesus says:

In regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

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?

If you do but a glimmer of not looking towards Jesus as to what to hold fast to, then you're gonna be judged. It is true that we will be judged for our not being obedient to Christ. That is absolutely true.

But his invocation of Satan—did you know that the Bible when we are introduced to Satan, it's not a name? It's a title. Satan means "the accuser." This is what he is. He is Javert. Satan is the Satan character in Les Misérables—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. And then he gets rebuked:

The Lord rebuke you, Satan. Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?

So Satan's job, his purpose—he is 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 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.

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?

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 lens of kingdom transfer. We once were in the domain of darkness, but we have been drawn out of this domain of darkness and into the kingdom of light.

When we were in this domain of darkness, this is the way that Ephesians 2 puts it:

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. — Ephesians 2

It's all kingdom language. 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. Michael is 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. But 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. The way that we function, the way that we live is different.

The spirit of God is coming to convict us—not just of the bad things we do, not just of the unreasonably positive way that we're functioning ourselves, but also the unreasonably negative way that we're evaluating others. 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. 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 that has set us free from all of that.

On Verb Tenses and Present Conviction

Verb tenses in the Bible are kind of strange because so much is happening in an already-not-yet. Jesus says that the kingdom is coming. 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 defeats Satan, makes a public spectacle of him, triumphing over him by the cross.

John 16 is pre-cross, but it's pre-cross by like three days. It is coming. It's right here. It's almost upon us. The conviction, the condemnation, the judgment is passed on Satan on the cross, and it's just here immediately upon us.

The Three Convictions Summarized

So those are the three: sin, righteousness, and judgment. If you can remember what they mean—sin means sin. What is righteousness? Self-suffering. What is judgment? Judginess, judgmentalism.

The connection's a little bit hard to summarize, but it is only in our faith in Christ that cleanses our sin. It is because the righteous one is no longer here 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—that we might be weaned away from our sin and our self-righteousness and our haughtiness, that we might find life in him.