The Holy Spirit in the World - Part B

God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. So you open up God's toolbox, not brilliant, not impressive, just us, but us filled with the Holy Spirit, us empowered by the Holy Spirit, us used by the Holy Spirit, us instruments of the Holy Spirit, that's a winning combo. When we follow God's calling for us, we don't work alone. God's helper is living inside us. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares how the Holy Spirit works through you to reach the world with the gospel.

Now we want to let you know about a resource that will encourage you and challenge you to fulfill your purpose to impact your world with the truth of Jesus Christ. Some people find comfort in the status quo. Others just can't wait to challenge it. If this were a recovery meeting, I would begin by saying my name is Skip and I'm a non-conformist.

How about you? Do you go with the flow or swim against the current? The truth is, going against the status quo can be difficult, but following Jesus requires it. The Bible's account of Daniel shows how God can transform lives by one person's willingness to defy what's normal. I like to think of it this way, when the waves of life came crashing down, Daniel decided to go surfing.

He thought, I'm going to ride these waves. If these waves are the will of God for my life, I'm going to learn how to master these things and I'm going to get propelled forward. Learn to soar above the status quo with Skip Heitzig's book, Defying Normal. It's our way of saying thanks for your gift of $35 or more to help connect more people to God's word. And when you give, we'll also include the booklet, What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren. These two resources will help you stand out from the crowd for God's glory.

Visit connectwithskip.com slash offer to give online securely today or call 800-922-1888. Now we're in John chapter 16 as we dive into our study with Skip Heitzig. That's what the Holy Spirit does. He brings you to the place where you can be forgiven and that guilt taken away.

It is the Holy Spirit that produces that. Now I've discovered most people need convincing. They need convincing. Most people don't admit they're sinners.

Most people I meet in the world don't even believe in the idea of sin. They're out blaming everybody else for the way they are. They want to blame their environment. I am the way I am because when I was a kid, my dad forced me to eat spinach.

I've hated him ever since. I've gotten an angry attitude because of that. So they're the reason I am the way I am. Or they want to blame their genetic structure. I'm biologically prone and predisposed to a certain behavior.

I have no choice at all. Listen, this game has gone all the way back to the Garden of Eden. That's exactly what Adam did. When God busted him for his choice, he blamed his wife. In fact, he blamed God.

He said, it's the woman you gave me. But the Holy Spirit does have a way of convincing the human heart of the need of the human heart, shining the bright light of truth into that life. By the way, convicting, convincing is not your job. It's the Holy Spirit's job. We get into trouble when we try to take that job over. Because it usually doesn't come out as conviction.

It usually comes out as condemnation, just makes people feel really bad. It's like a little girl who sold Girl Scout cookies. She sold hundreds of boxes of Girl Scout cookies. And so they asked her, how were you successful in selling so many? She said, actually, it's quite easy. You got to look people right in the eye and make them feel guilty. She said, it works every time.

It might work selling Girl Scout cookies. It does not work in sharing the gospel. Jesus said, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.

And the way he draws them is by the Holy Spirit. So he's going to convict the world. And notice in verse nine, the sin is singular, of sin, not sins. He's not going to come along and say, you know, you spoke badly to your neighbor, or you were speeding like you were always speeding this morning, or you stole something when you were younger.

Your conscience usually does a pretty good job of that. No, the Holy Spirit will convict people of sin singular. That is a very particular type of sin that their conscience would never convict them of, ever. And what is that sin? It says, unbelief of sin, because they do not believe in me. That's the sin the Holy Spirit convicts people of, unbelief. People in the world on their own do not see unbelief as a sin. Heck, it's a badge of honor for them.

It's a badge of honor. They'll say things like, I don't believe in Jesus. I'm not as weak as you are. I don't need to believe in something other than myself, outside of myself. I don't need to believe in God.

I'm much more enlightened and intelligent than you are. They don't see unbelief as the thing that separates them from God forever. But the Holy Spirit will convince them of that.

It's the worst sin, because it prevents forgiveness of all other sins. John chapter 3, he who believes in the Son is not condemned. He who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. John chapter 5, Jesus said, you do not believe. John chapter 8, you do not believe in me. John chapter 14, you do not believe in me. It's that sin. He'll convict the world of sin, because they don't believe in me. Second thing he'll do is convict the world of righteousness. Verse 10, because I go to my Father and you see me no more.

What on earth does that mean? Well, most people think if there's a God, if there's a heaven, I'm probably good enough to go there. I'm probably good enough to go there. I may not be perfect. I may not be 100% righteous, but I have a righteousness.

I'm better than a lot of people, and I believe that in the end, my good deeds will outweigh my bad deeds. That's how most people live their lives, by a relative righteousness. But then Jesus came into the world, and suddenly you have the perfect standard of righteousness. Suddenly, no matter who you are, next to Jesus, you ain't much.

Imperfection next to perfection simply accentuates imperfection. That's why Isaiah the prophet, though he was a prophet, when he saw God said, woe is me, I'm undone. I'm not that special next to God. Years ago, I had the opportunity to speak at the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove. I'd spoken there for many times, but on one particular occasion, I got really nervous because I happened to be at lunch that day with Dr. Billy Graham at his house, and he smiled and he said, I'm going to come to hear you speak tonight. And I'm hoping that something happens where he's busy and he doesn't come because it's not easy to give a message in front of Billy Graham. To make it worse, the topic I was assigned to speak on that night was evangelism. Yeah, this skiff's going to tell Billy Graham how to do evangelism.

This is not good. You see, when you know a little bit about evangelism, but you're speaking to the world's most effective evangelist ever born, who has led more people to Christ in history than anyone else, it's a little daunting. So you have a perfect standard of righteousness in Jesus Christ. So yeah, you got people saying, you know, I think I'm going to go to heaven. If there's a God, I'll be there because I think my good deeds will outweigh my bad deeds. No, this is what Jesus said. He's going to convict the world of righteousness because I go to my Father and you see me no more.

Let me explain that. There's only one person who ever walked this earth, who at the end of his life had the right to go directly on his own merit into the presence of God. Only one person. That's Jesus Christ. He died. He ascended into heaven.

God highly exalted him and gave him the name Lord above all other names. So unless you possess the righteousness of Jesus Christ, you will never see God. You will never see God. Unless you are that righteous, didn't Jesus say, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of God.

Unless you possess the righteousness of Jesus, you will never see God. So the sin that condemns you is unbelief. The righteousness that saves you is the righteousness that only Jesus possesses. And folks, that happens to be the gospel. The gospel is the gospel is you come convicted of your sin, admit that you're a sinner, ask Jesus to save you by simple belief, and then God gives to you the righteousness of his Son, imputes that to your account. 2 Corinthians 5 21, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

It's the exchange. So now God, if you believe, will see you as if you are as perfect as Jesus was. That's righteousness. And he'll convict the world of judgment. Verse 11, of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. The Holy Spirit will convince people that there is indeed a coming judgment, a time of accountability, and that if you reject Jesus Christ, you will face that judgment. But he says this, of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. When Jesus died on the cross, Satan's kingdom was effectively over.

I know he's had a lot of free time since then, and that chain is pretty long, and he's done a lot of damage, but his fate is sealed. The cross ruined him. That's Genesis chapter 3 verse 15.

There's coming a seed, a male child who will be born and crush the head of Satan. It's Colossians chapter 2. At the cross he disarmed principalities and powers.

It's Hebrews chapter 2. He destroyed him who had the power of death, that is the devil. So when Jesus says of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged, he is arguing from greater to lesser. He's saying that if God destroyed the most powerful evil force in the universe, you will not escape.

You will not escape. If he judged the devil, then anyone less than the devil who rejects Christ will face judgment. You know, I've always, always seen it as a healthy sign when people are thinking about future judgment.

I've always seen it as good. A few years ago I had an FBI agent wanted to come and meet with me, and he sat in my office, and he was kind of shuffling his feet. He was really embarrassed. He said, you know, I was on the airplane the other day, and I'm flying, and I started thinking, what happens if this plane goes down? And he thought, I'm going to die. And he goes, suddenly I was overcome with a fear of death. And he looked at me, he goes, that's weird, huh? I said, that's not weird.

That's smart. That's a healthy thing to be afraid of. He said, no, no, you don't understand. I'm an FBI agent. I've faced death many times. I've had guns pointed at me. I've shot people. They've shot me.

I've been on SWAT teams. I've learned to deal with fear. I said, let me ask you a question. Are you right with God?

Do you have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, his son? I explained what that meant. He said, no. Then I said, you should be very afraid, very afraid, because there is a coming judgment, a coming reckoning. If you think you're going to approach God in that condition, you ought to be afraid to die. I said, you want to be unafraid to die?

You want to be unafraid of bullets and viruses and anything else? Receive Christ right now. Let him clothe you with his righteousness and walk out of here a bold, saved human being. And he did. He prayed right there to receive Christ.

His life changed forever. That's the Holy Spirit's job to do that, convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. But there's a third component. Not only his presence, not only his pressure, but also his people.

And my statement is this. His people are instrumental. So what I mean by that is the Spirit of God and the people of God work in tandem together.

They work in tandem together. Again, look at verse seven. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It's to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come.

What are the next two words? To you, disciples. To you. He's coming to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you, disciples. Verse eight. And when he has come, implied in that is when he has come to you, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.

He's coming to you so that when you are involved in this process, he will be behind the scenes working, but you are very much a part of it. So look back, if you don't mind, look back in chapter 15 at verse 26 and 27 again. When the Helper comes, whom I will send from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, look at this. He will testify of me.

But wait, look at the next verse. And you also will bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning. Who's going to testify? The Holy Spirit and me.

Together, in tandem, working together. Yes, it's the Holy Spirit who does the convicting, but he always does it through human channels. He works through people.

We are God's instruments. Virtually every conversion in the book of Acts was the Holy Spirit working through a Christian witness. Who preached a sermon on the day of Pentecost? Peter. Peter preached. Peter. Peter wasn't a seasoned sermonizer, sermonator. Peter's up there preaching. You know what it says? The people were cut to the heart.

Cut to the heart. That's conviction. How did they get convicted? Wasn't Peter. But God used Peter, the Holy Spirit, through the message of Peter, both together.

Both together. You say, well, what about Saul of Tarsus? He didn't have a Christian witness. He was on the road to Damascus.

Oh, he did. Yeah, the Lord spoke to him on the Damascus road, but do you remember what the Lord said to him? He said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

It's hard for you to kick against the goad's prods. That's the conviction. Something in his heart was goading him, prodding him, convicting him, convincing him. He had just watched Stephen die a martyr's death with joy in his heart. And ever since he saw that and heard him testify of Jesus, that has been eating away at his soul.

And so the Lord said, it's hard for you to kick against those goads, that conviction that the Holy Spirit placed through the martyrdom of Stephen. Then there was Cornelius in the book of Acts, and Cornelius had an angel appear to him. So you've got an unbelieving Roman soldier having a conversation with an angel.

That ought to be interesting. And you would think once the angel has the unbeliever's attention, he's going to preach the gospel to the unbeliever. He doesn't do it. He doesn't do it. The angel says to Cornelius, go call for Peter. And when he has come, he's going to tell you and your family how to get saved.

Well, why don't you just do it? Because God always uses human instruments. So if you look in God's toolbox, it's pretty unimpressive tools.

Us. I hope that doesn't offend you. Because that's right out of scripture, right? 1st Corinthians 1, you see your calling, brethren, not many mighty, not many noble, not many wise are called, for God has chosen the foolish things of this world. That's my life verse, by the way. That's my life verse.

And people ask, that's it. God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. So you open up God's toolbox, not brilliant, not impressive, just us, but us, filled with the Holy Spirit, us empowered by the Holy Spirit, us used by the Holy Spirit, us instruments of the Holy Spirit.

That's a winning combo. And that's how the Holy Spirit works in the world. Now, as we close this, we get back to the task, same task, different generations, 2020. Some of us are wearing masks.

We got a COVID thing going on. So it's not 2000 years ago, but the same task, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. When you hear that, you might immediately think, too big of a task, too hard, too many unsafe people. I want to give you a few takeaways. Number one, you and I are called not to be manufacturers, just distributors.

You know the difference? You're not called to save anybody. You can't manufacture their salvation. So I've had people say to me, I remember two years ago, you saved me.

I didn't save anybody. I'm just a distributor. I may have said something that the Lord used, but it's His message. It's His gospel. I didn't make this up. I'm not the manufacturer. I'm just the distributor.

You plant the seed, you give the message, and God takes it and does great things with it. So that's number one. Number two, I think the enormous amount of enormity of this task is what keeps us going, not the smallness of the task.

Fact checked. It's called the Great Commission. It's not called the Mediocre Commission or the Small Commission. It's called the Great Commission. It's not a great task. The Communist Party in Soviet Russia years ago learned that they could recruit more people to their endeavor by telling them that the task is huge, almost impossible, but worth them giving their lives for. They said we had more young people sign on because we discovered people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. There's nothing bigger than this.

Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature and whoever believes will be saved. And number three, I want to close with this last little tidbit. Great works are done by the combination of smaller parts. Great works are done by the combination of smaller parts. You can't do it all. I can't do it all. But together, we put our parts together.

Great things can happen. You say, oh, I can't go into all the world. I'm raising kids at home. That's your part. You are depositing truth into those little hearts so they will grow up and be able to withstand the onslaught of weirdness and falseness that will be their culture.

You think it's bad now. Wait till they grow up. That's a great noble task. We just need to see that whatever we do is worth it.

It's worth it. A man was at a construction site and there were a group of stonemasons all working on stone. They were all doing exactly the same task. The man asked one of them, what are you doing? And the reply was, I'm chipping stone.

He said it like that, just like I hate my job. I'm chipping stone. He asked a second man, what are you doing? He said, I'm making a wall.

I'm doing the same thing. One's chipping stone, the other's making a wall. He asked a third, what are you doing? He said, I'm building a cathedral.

Guess what? We're building a kingdom. The Holy Spirit and us together on this earth, we are building a kingdom.

That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message from the series 2020. Now, here's Skip to share how you can help keep this broadcast going strong, connecting you and others around the world with the gospel. It's a great comfort to me that no matter where we go or what we do, God is ever present in our lives. Our whole ministry is based on the desire to connect friends like you with God and with His Word. But we need your help to keep these teachings going out to you and to others. We'd be so grateful if you shared a gift today to keep this radio ministry going strong. Here's how you can do that right now. To give today, simply call 800-922-1888. That number again is 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate.

That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Your generosity helps keep this biblical encouragement coming your way and going out around the world to help change more lives. Tune in tomorrow as Skip's son, Nate Heitzig, explains what the Bible itself has to say about the Holy Spirit and why this matters to you. Have you ever wished you could just know the thoughts of God, know what God's thinking, know what's going on up there in heaven? Well, according to scripture, you can, to a certain extent, through the Holy Spirit. When we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, we can, to a certain extent, know the thoughts of God because the Holy Spirit knows the thoughts of God. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.