The vital ministry of the Holy Spirit

Open: Imagine you are out hiking and you leave the marked trail to explore and you get disoriented. You are wandering in circles getting more and more lost and the light is beginning to fade. Then you remember that you have a compass in your backpack.

Transition: The compass was with you the entire time, but did you no good forgotten in the depths of the backpack.

The Presence of the Comforter is to our advantage (John 16:7)

Explanation: Jesus was preparing His disciples for His absence. One of the important things He tells them is that when He departs He will send the Comforter. Jesus also tells them that the Coming of the Holy Spirit is expedient. The arrival of the Holy Spirit is profitable for the disciples; He will be of great advantage.

Illustrate: doing data entry of financials by hand copying and then doing the math with pen and paper. You can be given a copy of Excel, but if you don’t understand it you will never use it.

Argument: The examples I have given fall way short of understanding the Holy Spirit. My examples both involve tools which can be used, manipulated, and managed. He is a personal being, not a mystical force and it is crucial for us to understand Him and His ministry in a more full sense.

Application: Be thankful for the presence of the Spirit of Christ. Acknowledge that He is with us and respect Him for who He is. One way to respect the person of the Holy Spirit is to gain a more full understanding of who He is and what He does.

The Holy Spirit is a person, not an impersonal force

He can be grieved (Eph 4:30)

He can be quenched (1 Thess. 5:19)

He can be lied to (Acts 5:3)

He intercedes for believers in prayer (Rom 8:26)

The Holy Spirit is God

Peter told Ananias that when he lied to the Holy Spirit, he was lying to God (Acts 5:3-4)

The Holy Spirit is responsible for raising Jesus from the dead (Romans 8:11a) and God is the One who raised Jesus from the dead (cf Rom 6:4; Galatians 1:1)

He shares God’s attributes - He is omnipresent (John 16)

The Holy Spirit’s role is vital to the Mission of the Church (John 16:8-11)

Explanation: Jesus taught the disciples that the Holy Spirit is the One who will focus attention on His person after He left. The ministry of the Holy Spirit focuses on exalting Jesus to His rightful place of prominence as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. (John 15:26)

Jesus taught the disciples that they would be human instruments who proclaimed the message of the Gospel, but that the power to transform lives would be through the agency of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). In this passage, Jesus teaches on three avenues the Holy Spirit works through for the proclamation of the Gospel

The Holy Spirit convicts of sin (John 16:9)

Explanation: As the 3rd person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the One who is responsible for bringing conviction of sin into a person’s life. The word in the text is reprove which means to convict. The definition of the word conviction is “the act of convincing a person of error or of compelling the admission of a truth”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2003).

In short, The Holy Spirit of God is the One who works in a person’s life to lead them to understand that he or she is a sinner

Illustrate: throwing a life preserver out in the middle of the floor and asking people to grab it so they won’t drown. No one will do so because they know they aren’t in danger.

Argument: The convicting power of the Holy Spirit is what brings a person to the realization that he or she is a sinner who has fallen short of God’s glory. Apart from His ministry, people may hear the words, but they will remain hardened or indifferent to the Gospel.

Application: We can and should pray for the Holy Spirit to convict the lost of their true status. Lost people are blinded to their sinful condition, and Divine assistance is required for understanding.

The Holy Spirit convicts the world of its false Righteousness (John 16:10)

Explanation: The Holy Spirit is the One who also convinces lost sinners that their self-righteousness is of no value. In His role of witnessing to truth, the Holy Spirit will convict sinners that their basis of good-standing before God is non-existent. Of course some lost people do not even have a biblical view of God to begin with, but the Holy Spirit exposes the falseness and emptiness of self-effort to gain God’s approval.

Illustrate: The world is full of teachings and books that attempt to show that humanity is doing OK on its own. The general idea is: I’m OK, you’re OK, we are OK. And for those who might be down on themselves for character flaws or moral failings, there are tons of self-help books: How to be a better you in 30 days!

Argument: The Holy Spirit is the One who convicts lost people of the truth about their situation. He is the One who establishes the reality of Isaiah 64:6 in the hearts of lost people. It takes a revelation from God to get lost people to realize that for all of their attempts at self-righteousness, they still fall short.

Religion is the outward expression of humanity’s attempt to deal with their guilt and inadequacies apart from Jesus. Millions have realized at some basic level of understanding that they aren’t really good people. In an effort to feel better about their sense of moral failure they turn to man-centered approaches for finding peace. This thinking has led to mysticism, meditation, voluntary vows of poverty, vegan living, save the whales, and theistic moral deism as well.

Application: Only Jesus can transform a life. Only Jesus as the God-Man can save a soul. He is the only One who reconciles lost sinners to God; He is the only worthy payment for sin, and only the alien righteousness of Jesus turns a sinner into a saint.

The Holy Spirit is the One who convicts lost people of their need for Jesus and only Jesus!

The Holy Spirit convicts the lost world of its Judgment (John 16:11)

Explanation: The final aspect of the Holy Spirit’s convicting power upon the world system is that it has already been judged. This is not a reference to the final end-times judgment, but it refers to the reality that the world system that opposes Jesus has been judged and condemned. The prince of this world is a reference to Satan and Jesus declared that he is judged. The verb form is in the past tense and refers to a completed action.

Argument: The terrible reality is that people who are not in Christ are under the wrath of God (John 3:36). The Bible teaches that “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). That means those who are outside of Christ are in the condemned state in the present.

Application: The ministry of the Holy Spirit is vital for the work of Evangelism. He is the One who reveals to a lost person that he or she is a sinner with a rotten foundation of self-righteousness that is worthless and that he or she is currently under the wrath of a Holy God.

Without a person understanding the bad news, he or she will not be inclined to receive the Good news. As long as sinners think they are OK with God, they will continue on with life as “normal”

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