R532 The Work of The Holy Spirit

Today we continue our study in the Holy Spirit with Dr. Don Wilton's biblically based teaching and a message called The Work of the Holy Spirit. As we study the Word, join us online as well at www.tewonline.org. It's the place to sign up for the daily devotional email from Dr. Don that's online at www.tewonline.org.

We'd love to connect with you. And now, Dr. Wilton, please take your Bibles with me this morning and turn to the Acts of the Apostles and Chapter 2, the book of Acts in the New Testament and Chapter 2. The Lord Jesus Christ is certainly pouring out His Spirit upon us during these days. My heart has been deeply blessed to see and to hear and to read about scores of men and women and boys and girls even here at First Baptist Church whose lives are being changed forever because of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I rejoice with you as we rejoice together, one with the other. It's a good thing to be in the house of the Lord and I love you today. We are in Acts Chapter 2, and Acts Chapter 2 is probably one of the most talked about, one of the most debated, in a way, one of the most controversial, I should imagine, one of the most awesome of all the passages in God's Word. All of God's Word is special.

It is awesome, action-packed. But in Acts Chapter 2, we read about the coming of the Holy Spirit. We talk about the Holy Spirit a lot.

Have you noticed that? There's a lot of discussion about the Holy Spirit. Who is He? What is He?

What does He do? What's the purpose of the Holy Spirit? There are whole churches that are built around the Holy Spirit, and it would seem that there is nothing else that is of any relevance excepting the Holy Spirit. Well, who is the Holy Spirit? What does the Bible have to say about the Holy Spirit? But before we get to the coming of the Holy Spirit, today I want us to consider the work of the Holy Spirit.

What does the Holy Spirit actually do? Have you ever asked someone what kind of work they're involved in? I suppose we do that to one another often. You know, what do you do? What do you do?

Oh, well, that's interesting. What do you do? Well, I'm an engineer, and I'm a doctor, and I'm a lawyer, and I'm a mom, I'm a dad.

I'm this and I'm that. What do you do? We ask people about work. What do you do? What is your work?

What is your vocation? Do you know that in the Bible, Jesus Christ takes great lengths to describe to us what kind of work the Holy Spirit does. He's that important. And what God wants us to know is He wants us to know who we're dealing with. God wants us to know exactly who it is we're dealing with. You know, we sing about the Holy Spirit, don't we? We say, Holy Spirit, thou art welcome in this place, one of my favorite songs. We talk about the Holy Spirit. We quote Scripture and we say when two or three are gathered in my name that I'm right there in the midst of them. We talk about being filled with the Spirit and baptized with the Spirit and all these things, but what exactly is it that the Holy Spirit does?

Well, let's discover that together. Let's read again Acts chapter 2, verse 1. The Bible says, When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly, a sound like the blowing of a violent wind, and I'm going to explain all of this in detail next week, came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on every one of them without exception. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, so much so that they began to speak in other languages or tongues as the Holy Spirit enabled them.

Now, they were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. And when they heard the sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked, Are not these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our own native language?

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontius, and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya near Cyrene. There were even visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, and we hear them declaring the wonders of our God in our own tongues. Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, What does this mean?

Some, however, made fun of them and said they have had too much wine. And so Peter, the pastor of the group, stood up with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd. And he said, Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I say.

These men are not drunk as you suppose. After all, it is only nine in the morning. Now I want you to turn your Bibles back to John, the Gospel of John in chapter 16. Everyone turn back. Let me hear all those pages turning. Turn back to John chapter 16 and verse 5. Here in John chapter 15 and 16, 14 and 15 and 16, we find Jesus doing a lot of talking to His disciples. You remember at the beginning of John chapter 14, Jesus said, Let not your hearts be troubled.

Please don't be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house there are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you and I'm going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to be with Me so that where I am there, you will be also. And in John 14 and 15 and 16 and 17, Jesus took great lengths to explain some of the most important things to believers, to His disciples and to the founding of the New Testament church. Jesus was preparing the way for His absence and not the least of these was that Jesus spoke about the work of the Holy Spirit. He was saying to His disciples, Listen, I am going away. And in fact, we don't have time to do this now, but if you even go back into John chapter 14 and verse 18, Jesus Himself uses the word orphans, O-R-P-H-A-N-S. And we all know what orphans are.

And Jesus was saying to them, Listen, when I send to be seated at the right hand of the Father and when I leave this earth, you are literally going to feel as though you are orphans. You are My children. I am your daddy.

I am your parent. And I'm going to leave you. And when I leave you, it's as though mom and dad are leaving for good and you are being left as orphans. You're going to have no parental leadership or direction or advice or wisdom because I, the Lord Jesus Christ, am about to leave you.

But I've got good news for you. I'm not going to leave you as orphans. I'm going to send myself back. I'm going to send My Spirit and His name is the Holy Spirit. And when I go up, My Spirit is going to come down and He is going to dwell with you and He is going to indwell you. And My Spirit has got a specific assignment. He's got a specific job to do. He has got work to do.

Well, let's read about that. John chapter 16 and verse 5. Now Jesus said, I'm going to Him who sent me. Yet none of you asks me, Where are you going? Because I have said these things you are filled with grief.

Excuse me. I can understand that, don't you? You know, I can understand that these disciples who had been around Jesus and Jesus said, I'm out of here.

I'm going. They were grief stricken. Now I want you to imagine when you are a child, if suddenly your mom and dad walked up to you and said to you, we're leaving. That's the kind of grief Jesus was talking about. He was talking about a deep rooted consternation. He was talking about a fear. He was talking about abandonment. And He was saying to them here, listen, I understand why you're not asking me a lot of questions. You are so consumed by your grief.

You're so consumed. Verse 6, Because I have said these things you are filled with grief, but I tell you the truth. It is 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. He will convict the world of righteousness and he will convict the world of 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. In regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you. What is the work of the Holy Spirit? There are six things that the Holy Spirit does.

You might want to write these things down this morning. Number one, he convicts. That's the first work that he's about. He convicts. Now listen, the word convict is very interesting. The word convict there from a spiritual perspective means that I am brought to the position in my life and the perspective by which I am absolutely convinced about my standing before a righteous God. That's conviction. It means that I am brought to the position at which I recognize who I am in relation to the holiness of God.

That's conviction. And here God in Christ Jesus through his spirit tells us that the Spirit of God convicts us in three areas. Number one, in regard to sin. And he tells us all about it right there in verse eight. He says when he comes he will convict me in regard to sin. Why in regard to sin?

Because men do not believe in me. Now listen folks, what is Jesus saying? He's saying here that the number one function of the Spirit of God is to convict people like you and me in regard to our sinfulness. That is what the Holy Spirit does. Who is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the righteousness of God. He is God in spirit.

He is the third person of the Trinity. He is absolutely holy and absolutely pure. And the word of God says that when Jesus Christ sent his spirit down to this earth, what he does for me is that he gets into my heart and into my life and he begins to convict me that I'm a sinner by nature and I'm a sinner by choice. He convicts me concerning my unsaved condition and he begins to draw me into the heart of God. If sin doesn't trouble you, do you know what's happening?

The Spirit of God is not working in your life my friend. You and I need to be praying for the conviction of the Spirit of God in the lives of people but he doesn't only convict me in regard to my sin, he convicts me in regard to my righteousness. Now by the way that word righteousness, if you look it up there on the board with me, what's the first part of that word? Righteousness.

Right. R-I-G-H-T. Righteousness is my right standing in relation to everything that God is. It is my capacity to live according to the standards of the holiness of Almighty God. Look what the Lord Jesus Christ says here. He says, my Spirit is going to convict you in regard to righteousness because I'm going to the Father where you can see me no longer.

Now friend, listen to this. If the Holy Spirit convicts me in regard to righteousness, the Holy Spirit is convicting me in how to live my life while I am alive. That's convicting me in regard to righteousness. And Jesus was saying, you know what gentlemen, I've been with you. I can just imagine the number of times that Jesus looked at the disciples and said, no, no, no, don't do that. You know much like we parents, don't we? We parents look at our children when they're growing up and we say, don't eat with your mouth open and don't stretch across the table and sit properly and don't talk like that and open your eyes when you speak and don't burp in company and don't do this.

And parents are all the time, we are instructing our children and we're teaching them and we're helping them to live right. Jesus was saying to his disciples, as your spiritual daddy, I have been about the business of teaching you how to live right. Now I'm going to leave, who's going to do that for you? Who's going to teach you spiritual table manners? I want you to know that my spirit is coming and he's not just going to convict you in regard to sin, but he's going to convict you in regard to righteousness.

Folks, watch me. You take the Holy Spirit out of this congregation and I will guarantee you unmitigated disaster. You come to a business meeting in this church without the presence of the spirit of God.

And I'll show you one person after another who will get up and will speak out of turn and will throw curve balls and will be ugly and untoward. We'll be at each other morning, noon and night, just like they do in the world today. You take the spirit of the living God out of God's church and out of God's people.

We have no means by which we are able to be convicted concerning righteousness. Please forgive the interruption. We'll be back with the rest of today's teaching in just a moment, but as Dr. Don is preaching about the possibility of the spirit of God and how it empowers us to be convicted of righteousness, he also wants you to know we're available to pray with you right now. 866-899-WORD will connect you with one of us anytime, day or night, to pray and perhaps to pray for you about the power of God's spirit in your life.

866-899-9673 or meet us online at www.tewonline.org. Now back to today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton. We're just going to do our own thing. Every time in the church, and I thank God it doesn't happen in this church, every time in the church I see a man or woman behaving in a bad way or making someone feel uncomfortable or with an agenda or undermining or gossiping about somebody or behaving in a bad way in the church, I will guarantee you something my friend. That person is holding up a flag and is saying, I want everybody to look at me, I am not being convicted by the Holy Spirit.

That's what they're saying. So what should we be praying for? The Holy Spirit convicts us in regard to sin, convicts us in regard to righteousness, but there's a third thing he convicts us of, he convicts us in regard to judgment. The Bible tells us about that right there in verse 11, in regard to judgment because the prince of this world now stands condemned. In other words, what Jesus Christ is saying is without the Spirit of God, you and I are going to have no care and no concern concerning the judgment of a righteous God on a sinful world.

Have you ever spoken to someone and said, listen, I really want to invite you to give your heart to Jesus because if you don't give your heart to Jesus, you cannot go and live with him. You are judged, you are condemned because of your sin. And they look at you and they say, well, so what?

I mean, are you talking to me or chewing a brick? I mean, what you, man, what you worried about? I'm not worried about all that judgment stuff. People who are not convicted of the Holy Spirit, they're going to say, oh man, who wants to get involved in all of that?

That's all hype and drama, gives preachers something to say, and man, God is a good God and he loves everybody and everybody's going to go to heaven one day and God could never do that to anyone. Who cares about judgment? Jesus said, listen, my friends, I'm sending my spirit so that you become convicted in your heart concerning judgment. Friend, if you are not convicted in your heart concerning judgment, you're not going to have any reason to want to go and tell others about Jesus.

It's just going to go boom right over your head. So number one, he convicts. Number two, he guides. He guides. Look at verse 13 in John 16.

The Bible says, but when he, the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. I love that word guide there because that word guide means several things. First of all, it means that he teaches me.

That's what a guide is. I love teachers. Teachers are very special people in our community. High school and elementary and middle school and Sunday school teachers, you are exceptionally special people in every community. You are the salt of the earth as far as the community is concerned.

You know why? Because God has given to you. He's entrusted the responsibility to you amongst other things of guiding young minds.

You're taking them and you're teaching them. If you go back into John 14 and verse 26, he says there, but the counsel of the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name will teach you all things. He not only teaches me, but in his guidance, he kind of nudges me. He just kind of bumps me along.

He nudges me. I remember when I was in the army and I was in southwest Africa, which is now called Namibia, a place called Walvis Bay, for those of you that are taking notes, W-A-L-V-I-S, Walvis Bay on the skeleton coast of southwest Africa. And we'd been in the bush and in the desert for a long time and we had some time off and my whole platoon was there and we were standing on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean on this big bay and we had nothing to do, no money to spend, nowhere to go, but being troops we were trying to find something urgently. And we were all standing around.

I was about 17 and a half years of age. And all of a sudden a motor boat, just one of these ski boats that you get on Lake Bowen, especially on July 4th, just came up. And there was a man in there and he said, gentlemen, he said, you're looking for something to do. He said, I've got a set of skis here. And he said, you see that board out there in the middle of the water? And we all looked out there in the bay. Sure enough, there was a board.

We call it a ski ramp, but I didn't know it was a ski ramp. And he said, listen, he said, how many of you would like to do this, man? I appreciate you guys in the military. And we all said, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. He said, I tell you what, I'll give $20 to any one of you put on those skis and take that ski ramp. Something in my heart began to say, hmm, yeah, never done it before.

Had never met Bill Stewart up until that point. I knew that it would be hopeless for me, but I said to myself, you know, maybe, well, then I talked the rest of my platoon to taking up a little offering. Have you ever heard of free will offerings? And we all began to chip in.

We got the $20 up to about $40 and that was looking pretty good. And I kind of felt myself being nudged along. And before I knew it, folks, I was being nudged and nudged. And the next minute my feet were getting wet and there in my uniform, in my fatigues, I'm on this set of skis.

I don't know how to ski. And I'm jetting around saying to myself, what in the world am I doing here? And the next minute looming up in front of me was this board. And to this day, I don't have all that much of a recollection what happened. But I tell you, I hit that board, lost control.

They said everything went all over from skis to body parts. I came over the edge at something like 560 miles an hour. And I tell you, I turned upside down and all over the place, landed, hurt myself, walked off, swam to the edge and got my pot of gold. And I've often thought about it. I've thought about all the things that came together to nudge me to do something that I really didn't need to be doing. Spiritually speaking, the Bible says that God by His Spirit is going to guide me in the sense that He is going to take this wretched sinner and He is going to show me the pot of gold that God has in store for me.

And He's going to kind of nudge me, sometimes reluctant. And I say, oh man, I can't do that. I can't sing. I can't teach. I can't preach.

I don't want to go. And the Spirit of God is just kind of spiritually speaking, just nudging me along. And eventually I find myself in that position where I'm doing what God wants me to do. And all I can do is thank God that His Spirit was the one who guided me. He teaches me.

He nudges me. He enlightens me. He enlightens me.

And He reminds me of Himself. John 14 and verse 26 again, the Bible says He not only guides me, but in guiding me, He is teaching me and reminding me continually of all that Jesus Christ has done for me. Powerful inducement.

It just does something for me. Have you ever had anybody say to you, look, spiritually speaking, you don't need to worry about anything. Long as you go to church and do good, you're going to be fine. That is a lie that does not come from God.

I've had people say that to me. Listen, you don't need to go to church. You don't need to give your life to Christ.

You don't, as long as you live a good life and as long as you go to church every now and again, like on Easter Sunday, or maybe you go with your girlfriend or if you go with your wife because she's just begging you to go. And as long as you give your money to the poor and as long as you read your Bible and say a special prayer every now and again, listen, the Spirit of God not only convicts me, but He guides me into all truth. It's been a powerful day of teaching as God through His word and through His servant, Dr. Don Wilton is guiding us into all truth. Perhaps the Lord has stirred your heart and you know it's time for a course correction, a change. I pray you'd not only have opened yourself to Dr. Wilton as a teacher in the pulpit, but he steps into the studio today.

I pray you'd hear from his heart. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today I repent of my sin and by faith I receive you into my heart in Jesus' name. My friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. You just gave your life to Jesus for the first time or rededicated your life praying along with Dr. Wilton. You need to know we're excited to rejoice with you.

We have wonderful free resources Dr. Wilton wants you to have. You just need to call us and let us celebrate with you. Our phone number is 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673. We can also connect on our website at www.tewonline.org and Dr. Wilton would love to hear how God is using the encouraging word in your life. Have you taken a moment and emailed him? His email is just Don, D-O-N at www.tewonline.org. He would love to hear about your story of what God's doing and also pray for you. That's Don at www.tewonline.org. Thank you so very much. I hope you'll join us tomorrow with Dr. Wilton's message, The Coming of the Holy Spirit.