The Holy Spirit: With, In, and Upon

One of the works of the Holy Spirit is to open the heart of the unbeliever to salvation, to Christ Himself. So it was God the Holy Spirit that awakened your need to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That feeling you got, that thing that was happening inside of you before you said yes to Jesus, that was the Holy Spirit all along, the hound of heaven.

You might not realize it, but the Holy Spirit is even active in the life of an unbeliever. Today on Connect with Skip Heite, Skip reveals the deeper role the Holy Spirit plays in your life and the lives of others. Right now, we want to tell you about a resource that equips you with a vast amount of Bible knowledge from Skip so you can deepen your faith even more. As we come to the end of the year at Connect with Skip, we have new plans for expansion that we want you to know about. In 2023, we hope to take these through the Bible teachings to more of the large population cities in our country.

When God deals with a nation, He often focuses on the cities, and we know our nation needs the Word of God. We'll tell you how you can join this project. But first, this from Skip. I want my legacy to be I made much of Jesus, that Jesus became greater in people's hearts and lives because of my life and ministry.

That they walked away understanding the Bible, that what seemed to be complicated was actually very simple, that I helped make it simple for them and understandable. When you help us expand into more metropolitan areas in 2023 with a year-end gift of $1,000 or more, we'll send you the Skip Heitzig Legacy Library so far. Containing 11 books, 17 booklets, and the Bible from 30,000 feet, Pastor Skip's incomparable teaching series of 64 full messages through the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, on a flash drive. That also includes Learning from the Land, Skip's video tour of Israel. G. Campbell Morgan was called in his biography a man of the Word, or the man of the Word. That's what I want to be, a man of the Word. The Skip Heitzig Legacy Library so far is a real treasure, and it's yours when you make a year-end gift of $1,000 or more, and you will be helping us expand the reach of these teachings.

Give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer, or call 800-922-1888. Now, let's join Skip Heitzig for today's message. The Holy Spirit was with you before you got saved. That's how you got saved, because the Holy Spirit was with you.

You go, what do you mean with me? He was hanging around to make you feel really bad, so that you would do something really good, and that is come to Christ. For that to happen, the Holy Spirit has to have some kind of a relationship with an unbeliever, and that relationship is he comes with the unbeliever. And I'll show you what he does in just a moment.

We just read it last time, but we'll drill down this time. The Holy Spirit has been called by some the Hound of Heaven. I don't know if you've ever heard that phrase. The Hound of Heaven is something that some people, preachers, writers, Christians will use in referring to the Holy Spirit. It's a term that comes from a poem written in the 1800s by a man by the name of Francis Thompson. He wrote a poem called The Hound of Heaven. Thompson had been a medical student. He dropped out of medical school. He got addicted to opium. He was in deep depression. He tried to commit suicide, but the poem, 182 lines of this poem, are his testimony of how he ran from God and tried to get away from God as far as possible, but the Holy Spirit, the Hound of Heaven, pursued him, chased him, was with him to bring him to salvation.

Here's just a couple lines of his poem to get the flavor of it. I fled him down the nights and down the days. I fled him down the arches of the years.

I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind. Then he describes God's pursuing him with these words. But with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace.

I love that. It's like, you know what? I was running. God just kept coming and just kept coming, and he was determined.

He was unrelenting to chase me down and get a hold of my life. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. He's with the unbeliever. Now, what does he do when he's with the unbeliever? Jesus, in John 15, verse 26, says, he, the Holy Spirit, will testify of me. Or, another translation says, he will tell you about me.

Or, another translation, he will speak plainly about me. That is, one of the works of the Holy Spirit is to open the heart of the unbeliever to salvation, to Christ himself. So, it was God the Holy Spirit that awakened your need to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That feeling you got, that thing that was happening inside of you before you said yes to Jesus, that was the Holy Spirit all along.

The hound of heaven. Now, go to chapter 16, please, of John. John 16, in verse 7, familiar territory. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, something I'm sure the disciples did not agree with when he said that.

For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you, but if I depart, I will send him to you. And when he has come, now watch this, when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and of judgment. Of sin because they do not believe in me. Of righteousness because I go to my Father and you see me no more.

Of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. Jesus said the first thing the Holy Spirit does is convict the world of sin. When the Holy Spirit is with you, you're running, he's walking right after you, he's chasing you, he's chasing you.

And every time he gets close to you, you start feeling weird about you. You start getting convicted about your own sin. He convinces you that you're a sinner, that's the idea of this. He will convince people in the world that they're sinners.

Here's how it works. Before anyone can ever figure out that they need a Savior, they have to figure out that they're a sinner. Unless you realize, man, I'm in bad shape, you'll never look for a Savior. As long as you think I'm good enough, I'm religious enough, I'm holy enough, you'll never look for help.

Jesus said only those who are sick need a doctor. And you have to admit that you're a sinner, so it's the Holy Spirit's job to convict the world of sin. Now, have you discovered most unbelievers are not convinced of this? Yet, you don't give up on them, you pray for them, the Holy Spirit's... Just keep praying the Holy Spirit will chase them.

The hound of heaven, sick them. Lord, in Jesus' name. You pray for that, you pray for that conviction of the Holy Spirit, because most people in their natural thinking are not convinced that they are. Most won't admit that they're a sinner, they don't even tolerate the idea or the word sin. In fact, when it comes to what we call sin, what they will often do is blame their environment. Well, I'm not a sinner, I am this way because it's how my parents made me eat spinach when I was a kid. And now I act like this, it's their fault, it's my environment. Or, they blame it on their genetic structure, their genes.

Oh, I have a genetic propensity to get really angry, that's why I beat people up all the time, I'm so violent, I can't help it. No, the problem is you're a sinner, and sinners need saviors, and the Holy Spirit is really good at this. It's amazing, the world can deny it, but I have watched in a flash of time, in a moment of time, the Holy Spirit shine his bright light of conviction and make people aware of their need.

And by the way, by the way, that's his job, not yours. It's not your job to convict people of sin, you're not very good at it, I'm not very good at it. Whenever Christians try to be the convictors, it doesn't come out as convicting, it comes out as condemnation.

That's what happens when we do it, when you leave it to the Holy Spirit, it drives a person down to the place where they see their deep need of a savior and they desire forgiveness. Not like 13-year-old Elizabeth, 13-year-old Elizabeth was congratulated because she sold, get this, any Girl Scouts in here? She sold 11,200 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, one girl, Elizabeth, 11,200 boxes. She was on the news and people said, how did you do it?

You know what she said? She said, you got to look people in the eye and make them feel guilty. That might work selling cookies, it doesn't work sharing Christ. It's the Holy Spirit's job. And so, when we look at the New Testament book of Acts, and we will, we see Peter on Pentecost standing up and preaching. And it says, do you remember how many people got saved that day? Three thousand souls got saved on Pentecost. That wasn't because Peter was a great exegetical preacher and analyzed the text with such precision. It was because the Holy Spirit of God convicted people and it says, listen to what it says, and they were cut to the heart. They were cut to the heart. And they said, what must we do? And Peter showed them what they must do. So the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin. There's something else I just want to make note of before we go on.

Notice that it's in the singular, not in the plural. It doesn't say the Holy Spirit will convict people of sins, but of sin. It's not like he's going to come along and say, that was wrong, that was bad. It's not like he's going to convict people of individual sins like stealing or lying or speeding.

I find that most people aren't convicted if they speed anyways. Or murdering or adultery. No, your conscience will do that. The Holy Spirit, rather than convicting of individual sins, he'll convict of sin. And more particularly, he will convict you of the sin your conscience will never convict you of, and society will never convict you of.

And you know what that is? Unbelief. He'll convict the world of sin. Jesus said, because they believe not on me. The Holy Spirit convicts people that their unbelief is a sin. And they want to do something about that sin of unbelief. Now, it takes the Holy Spirit to convince a person of that.

Because you know what? Most worldly people don't see unbelief as a bad thing. They see it as a good thing.

It's almost a badge of honor to them. Well, I'm just so smart, I'm just so intelligent. That's why I don't believe. I can't believe. I'm just smarter than all you Christians.

I don't have a crutch like you have. And so they look at unbelief not as something that's a sin, they see it as a mark of intelligence. Jesus said it's sin. In fact, it's the worst sin of all. Because it's the sin of unbelief that prevents people from being forgiven for every other sin. So the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin because they believe not on me. Now, let me just say a word to you. If you are closely related to an unbeliever, you're married to an unbeliever, you have an unbeliever living in your house, you're around an unbeliever a lot. If that's true, you make sure you get special prayer before you go home tonight. And I mean that seriously.

Let us bear that burden with you. Because one of the hardest things to do in life is to share the same space with an unbeliever under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. When a person is convicted of their sin, but they haven't surrendered yet to Christ, they are miserable to hang with. They'll say the meanest things, they'll do the harshest things. A person under the conviction of the Holy Spirit can be a tyrant, can be hostile. So conviction is a good thing, but if you're living around somebody who has it, it can be a hard thing. So the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin.

Next, look at the text again. He'll convict the world of righteousness, Jesus said. Of righteousness because I go to my Father, chapter 16, verse 10, and you see me no more. The Holy Spirit convicts people of righteousness.

What does that mean? He convinces people that they are not good enough in their own righteousness. They're not good enough. Their own good deeds, religious works, righteous behavior isn't good enough. What does the Bible say about a righteousness that's like what?

Filthy rags before God, filthy rags. The Holy Spirit is the one who convinces a person that their righteousness, whatever they measure that by, isn't good enough. You know the world has the standard of righteousness, right? And you know what it is typically?

It's typically this. I'm not perfect, but I'm not as bad as some. So if they were to map out righteousness, it would sort of look like a thermometer or a gauge, okay? At the very bottom would be like the worst possible person in solitary confinement for doing the most heinous things ever in the world.

So that's the bottom tier, you know, all the bad criminals. Then you go up a little bit, you know, up to 20 degrees or 20% or 40%, you get a little bit better people and then a bit better people and better people. It's always fun when they say that, say, well, where are you on that scale?

Just point to a number, just curious. But then on that same scale, 100, well, that's God. That's the white hot perfection of God and nobody can be perfect. So I'm better than a lot of other people. So it's a floating standard of righteousness.

Okay. Then Jesus comes along and when Jesus came along, he demonstrated a completely different kind of righteousness. And he blew their minds when he said to them things like this, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the most religious people you can think of, scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God.

Ouch. That was a hard sermon to hear. And then in the same sermon, he said, be perfect, just as your father in heaven is perfect. He drew the line at 100%. Well, how would that make anybody feel hearing that? Not great, right?

Not a pat on the back. My righteousness has to be better than the religious dudes. I'm sure if I heard that sermon for the first time, there was a sermon on the mount by the way, I'd feel like Isaiah the prophet, he had a vision of God. Remember what he said when he saw the vision of God? Did he say, wow is me? I'm lucky I saw God. I'm going on Christian TV to show people my new book, I saw God.

What did he say? Woe is me. Woe is me, he said in that vision. I'm a man of unclean lips, I dwell among a generation of unclean lips and my eyes have beheld the Lord.

So when you stand next to the perfect one, it shows how imperfect you and I are. An illustration I go back to is years ago I was asked to speak at the Billy Graham Training Center. I've spoken there for many years back in North Carolina. And it was a thing that I did every year and I was speaking that night. And that was okay. I love doing that. I love speaking. I love speaking to believers. But that afternoon I was at Dr. Billy Graham's home.

We had lunch which was a privilege. And he said to me, I'm coming to hear you speak tonight. Well, I've never put myself in the Billy Graham category but if I said to you, if you were going to speak, hey, I'm going to come listen to you speak tonight.

You might go, would you just stay home? And that's what I'm thinking. Just relax. You have a busy life. You're like, we're televangelists. Just hang out because I'm going to come and hear you tonight. And, okay, to make matters worse, you know what my topic was at the Cove? Evangelism. So I am going to speak on evangelism with the world's greatest evangelist in the house in history. You've seen more people come to Christ in his ministry than any person who has ever lived. And I'm going to talk on evangelism.

Hello. It was just so hard to get that message out. And then before I went up to speak, they said at the Cove, now, not everybody here who comes to these meetings is saved. You may want to give an altar call. I said, great. I'm going to give an altar call to the guy who does altar calls all the time with great success.

But I mean, all of that, just I just realize, you know, it put me in my place in a good way. He's Billy Graham and I'm not. But here goes. So in the same manner, you never impress God with your righteousness. Because he's so perfect. He's perfectly righteous.

But and this is gets to the point. Jesus came and died atoning for our sins and he ascended into heaven. And when he ascended into heaven, it was as if the father said, now, this is the righteousness that I will accept. His righteousness is perfect.

And he ascended into heaven and sat at the right hand of the throne of God. It's as if God was saying, this is the righteous life, the righteous standing, the righteousness I will accept. So the Holy Spirit then convinces us that we are sinners, but he tells us what to do about it. He convinces us we need to stand in Jesus imputed righteousness.

Just means he gives it to you. He confers it upon you when you believe in him. So he makes you feel really bad that you're a sinner, but then really good because you're standing in his righteousness. As Paul said, one of my favorite texts in Philippians, and by God's grace, we'll get to it one day on Sunday morning. When Paul said, and being found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is by the law, but the righteousness which comes through faith in Jesus Christ. I am not standing in my goodness, my righteousness, my background, my pedigree, my religion, the religion of my parents and grandparents.

I'm found in him having his righteousness and not my own. So the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, he convicts the world of judgment or of sin, of righteousness. And then third, go back to the text, he convicts the world of judgment. And it says of judgment because the ruler, notice that, or prince, the ruler of this world is judged. What the Holy Spirit does, part and parcel of the work of the Spirit with an unbeliever, is to show them not only are they a sinner and that Jesus has perfect righteousness for them, but if they push his righteousness away and say, I don't want to receive Christ, I don't need Christ, the further conviction is that there is a judgment that is coming and they are standing right in judgment's path. That there is such a thing if they reject the righteousness of Christ. And Jesus says that is proved by what happened to the ruler of this world. When Jesus died on the cross, Satan's fate, his doom was sealed.

It was set. Now I just want to say it's always healthy, it's always healthy when somebody is nervous about judgment. I hear people say, you know, I don't like churches that speak about judgment.

I do, I'm sorry. I do, because people need to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And if you say no to Christ, there is a judgment that is coming. And that's the work of the Holy Spirit as well. And it's always a healthy sign when I find somebody who's worried about where they're going to go when they die.

That's good. God uses guilt so that it can be alleviated at the cross. I was a chaplain for the FBI for a number of years, and I'll never forget a meeting that I had with one of the agents. He came to my office and he was embarrassed. He kind of paced around a little bit and he goes, I don't know how to say this, I just feel weird.

And so he finally got around to saying, you know, I'm a special agent, I use a firearm, I put myself in harm's way, I've shot at people, I've killed people, I've had people shoot at me, and I've never worried about it, ever. But he said, the weird thing is I'm getting on an airplane to go to Washington, D.C., to headquarters, and I'm worried about flying and dying. And he said, I feel weird, like where am I going to go when I die? And then he goes, isn't that weird?

I go, no. That's one of the smartest things you could ever say or feel. And we had a wonderful, lengthy conversation at the end of which he bowed his head and received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That's the Holy Spirit that convicted him of sin and righteousness and of judgment. So it's the Holy Spirit that pursues us and testifies that Jesus Christ is what we need. That's the Holy Spirit with a person. That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Expound Holy Spirit.

Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now we want to share about an exciting opportunity you have to take your knowledge of God's Word even deeper. Going to church is a great way to learn about God. But what if you want to learn more?

Go deeper. This spring, Calvary College is offering classes in spiritual growth. Classes like Spiritual Foundations. Learn how to joyfully walk with Jesus.

Take evening classes on campus or online. And transfer credits to Calvary Chapel University or Veritas International University for an accredited degree that will impact your spiritual life for the rest of your life. Apply now at calvarychurchcollege.com. Your heart for this broadcast is to help friends like you live a life empowered by the Holy Spirit, grounded in God's Word, and connected to Jesus every day.

That's why we share these Bible teachings. And right now, you can help others experience that same God-empowered life through your support to connect more people to Jesus. So please call now to help share God's truth through your generosity. Just call 800-922-1888 to give today.

That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate.

Thank you. Come back tomorrow as Skip Heitzig explains what spiritual gifts are all about and how you're meant to use them to build God's kingdom. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His Word. Make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.