Ep. 032 A Spirit of Conviction

Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located

in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship

Ministries with 3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism,

discipleship and church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church

and other sermons from throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bigford and I will be your

host for this podcast. I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages are a blessing

to you and bring you closer to God.

Hello and welcome back to the P.H.S.A. podcast. My name is David Bigford. I'm the pastor

here for the Potter's House and Salmon Arm. The message I put together today is called

A Spirit of Conviction, Sinner, Saint, Salvation and Service. We will be using the text of

John 16, 5-11 as our jumping off point. Let's go ahead and get into it. The idea of this

sermon is all about conviction. With that, you will have to work with me because the

spirit of conviction of the Holy Ghost works differently in different situations. We will

dive into it here as we get started.

A well-known professional golfer was playing in a tournament with President Gerald Ford,

fellow pro Jack Nicklaus and Billy Graham. After the round was over, one of the other

pros on the tour asked, hey, what was it like playing with the president and Billy Graham?

The pro said with disgust, I don't need Billy Graham stuffing religion down my throat. With

that, he headed to the practice tee his friend followed and after the golfer pounded out

his fury on a bucket of golf balls, he asked, was Billy a little rough on you out there?

And the pro sighed and said, with embarrassment, no, he didn't even mention religion. Astonishingly,

Billy Graham had said nothing about God, Jesus or religion, and yet the pro stomped away after

the game, accusing Billy of trying to ram religion down his throat.

This quick illustration gives us the first glimpse of how conviction is used by God and

how others can be impacted or influenced by that spirit of conviction. In the past, I've

spoken about the mob ruling, Israel calling for a king and the general decline of our

society. And I believe these ideas all have a similar root and we can all tie them back

to this idea of conviction or in our time, the spirit of conviction. When people sin

or do something that goes against their conscience, it seems that often we are faced with this

emotional or spiritual quandary within ourselves and we start to act funny or act in somewhat

of a weird way. So we will act differently to our friends and loved ones and those in

authority above us when we feel like we're in the wrong. So I can come up with countless

examples of this. You have the simple example of a kid with his hand in the cookie jar and

how everyone tends to slow down when they see a police officer. Even if you're following

the speed limit, you tend to see a police officer and you're like, oh, I'm going to

slow down a bit. Or emotional outbursts when someone questions our behavior. So these kind

of things represent themselves whenever we kind of come into situations in our lives.

And a lot of times this can be rooted back to, you know, you're doing something wrong

or you're afraid you're doing something wrong and so you act a different way. The reality

is that we don't like to be challenged or tested in our lives. And when someone comes

along and shines a light a day on our actions, we tend to instinctively recoil. The same

thing happened to Adam and Eve in the garden, Genesis 3, 7 through 8. It says, when the

eyes of both were open and they knew that they were naked, they sewed fig leaves together

and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden

in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

Lord God among the trees of the garden. This instinct was due to conviction, the spirit

of conviction, the idea that we know we did something wrong and now we don't want to face

the judgment that's going to come from it. So when we define conviction or convict conviction

in the Bible and from a biblical standpoint, the Greek word is elencho, which is used in

the New Testament to express both the convicting work of God's spirit and the ministry of

rebuke within the Christian community. So generally elencho means to convince or to

refute. It gradually took on an additional meetings to correct or often by accusing or

to convict. Elencho is used in the Septuagint to translate the Old Testament term, the NIV

and the NSAB translates to correct. So this is the idea of conviction. It's not meant

to beat you over the head. It's meant to correct. It's meant to convince. It's meant to refute.

So God's correcting is a powerful ministry. It confronts human beings in their sin. And

we can see that in our scripture that we're going to read through in John 16, five through

11, we can see it in Jude 15, the Holy Spirit is the active agent in this ministry. And

we see that as Jesus promises that when the spirit comes, he will convict the world of

guilt regarding sin and righteousness and judgment. So let's go ahead and turn to our

text in John 16, five through 11, the work of the Holy Spirit. But now I'm going to him

who sent me and none of you, and none of you asks me, where are you going? But because

I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you

the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away for if I do not go away, the helper

will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will

convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment concerning sin, because they

do not believe in me concerning righteousness because I go to the father and you will see

me no longer concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. So as we consider

you, the, you know, the, uh, the ideas behind this message, we're going to take a look at

centers, saints, salvation and service, right? Those are going to be the key tenants we look

at. So first we're going to look at centers. We're all centers and we know that we were

all saved from sin, but we're going to primarily, you know, focus on those that have not yet

accepted Jesus Christ and they're still living in their sin. So if you've given your life

to Jesus, then you've been redeemed, but we're all, we were all still born into sin and without

the grace of Christ, we would have died in our sin. The act of ministry of the spirit

has been to carry out, has been carried out since Jesus coming at Pentecost. This does

not guarantee conversion. A person may hear the gospel, recognize his or her personal

sin and need, and yet many will choose not to believe. Even the brilliant light of God's

revelation directed by his spirit to reveal an individual's heart does not release that

individual from the responsibility of personal choice. So this brings me to a similar illustration

in the Old Testament. Samuel 8 verses one through nine, Israel demands a king. When

Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son

was Joel and the name of his second Abishai and they were judges in Beersheba. Yet his

sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside from after gain. They took bribes and

perverted justice. And then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel

at Ramah and said to him, behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways.

Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all nations. But the things displease Samuel

and they said, give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord and the Lord

said to Samuel, obey the voice of the people and all that they say to you, for they have

not rejected you, but have rejected me from being their king over them. According to all

the deeds they have done from the day that I brought them out of Egypt, even to this

day forsaking me and serving other gods. So they are also doing to you now then obey their

voice only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king that shall

reign over them. Give us a king like all their nations was the call. So the situation is

that the desire of the Israelites to have a king was both from a place of unbelief and

envy. They routinely fought God's plan for their lives and they opened and that opened

them up to being filled with envy for what they believed other nations had. They were

convicted of their sins and the desire of earthly ruler did they desired an earthly

ruler because they had already denied their heavenly ruler through their will, their willful

acts of disobedience and sin. It is clear that they were dealing with a fact that Samuel

was coming to the end of his time and that his kids were not living up to the same expectation

of godliness that Samuel had put into the people of Israel. So with that they said we

are going to throw this all away, we are not going to trust God to raise up somebody new,

we are just going to say give us an earthly ruler. So at this time in Israel's history

they had yet to have a king outside of God himself. There were judges whom God rose up

to help the Israelites in times of need and there were priests that were meant to point

Israel to the law of Moses and the covenant that it had with God. So if you consider the

rights and privileges that were laid out in Levitical law you could argue that they were

a constitutional form of government at this time. Each tribe fundamentally governed itself

but was required to rule according to the tenets of the law or the constitution given

by God himself. They had tremendous freedom but they were bound by a heavenly covenant

and they did not want to have to live up to that standard any longer. They wanted a more

lowly standard from a man just like themselves. They desired to be like other nations and

this coming forth from their loss of faith in God. They lost faith in Samuel because

of his kids and that loss was actually a loss in faith of God to his ability to rise up

someone in his stead. This happened when Moses was too slow coming down from Mount Sinai

as well in Exodus 32. When the people saw Moses was so long and coming down from the

mountain they gathered around Aaron and said come make us gods who will go before us. As

for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt we don't know what has happened

to him. The Israelites were fickle with their faith and we see similar examples of that

in our society today. Christian culture constantly strives to bend the word of God to fit the

secular world around us. We are called to accept ungodliness in our society as something

to be revered. We are persecuted and judged for holding godly standards. We are told that

times have changed and that we need to reinterpret what the word or what the scripture in God's

word means. Our desire is to fit in, is moving against our conscience and pressuring us to

give up our beliefs in God's word to belong and to find friends in this world. This is

what happens to the Israelites and it became their downfall. They received warnings about

this but God's plan to govern over his people through his prophets, judges and priests,

this theocracy was based on his benevolence and his covenant. His plan did not include

this earthly king and despite the warnings that were given the people of Israel would

not relent. So God allowed them to fit in and to suffer with their choices to reject

God. In 1 Samuel 8, 10-22 we read the rest of this where it says, So Samuel told all

the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him and he said, This

will be the ways of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint

them to his chariots to be his horsemen and run before his chariots and he will appoint

for himself commanders and thousands of commanders of fifties and some to plow his ground and

to reap his harvest and to make his implements of war and his equipment of his chariots.

He will take your daughters to be perfumed fume and cooks and bakers. He will take the

best of your field, the vineyards, olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take

a tenth of your grain of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his servants.

He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and

your donkeys and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your flock and you shall

be his slaves and in that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen

for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. But the people refused to

obey the voice of Samuel and they said, No, but there shall be a king over us that we

will also be like the other nations and that our king may judge us and go out before us

and fight our battles. And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people he repeated

to them and as the ears of the Lord and the Lord said to Samuel obey their voice and make

them a king. Samuel then said to the men of Israel, go every man to his city. So often

we encounter peer pressure and we can seek out advice and sometimes that advice comes

from a godly source and sometimes it comes from the source of our friends, but they're

being ungodly and we see this in our society today. Like this idea of kingship. Man, wouldn't

it be great if our governments today only took a tenth of our belongings, but instead

they take far more than that from us today, but people are continuously putting their

faith in men, in fallen men that lead these governments in the world and there's been

like terms or phrases about in the new world order you will own nothing and be happy. And

that really does speak to this warning against kings. This elite leadership class that's

going to bestow upon you what you need to survive and take all your worries away, but

at the same time they will take everything of yours to themselves. But yet so many in

society today put their trust in these men and they deny the spirit of conviction that

comes from our Lord. So this reminds me of the Rehoboam's choice in 1 Kings 12 and verses

3 through 5 where it says, And they sent and called to him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly

of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore

lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you.

And he said to them, Go away for three days and then come to again to me. So the people

went away. So the advisors of King Solomon and his father recommended lightening the

load and dealing with them in humility. And we are reminded of this even in Christianity

with allowing the spirit of conviction to do the heavy lifting, but dealing with those

with like sinners and people who are lost, dealing with them with compassion. Stating

that this would endear them back to the house of Judah, Rehoboam's friends on the other

hand, you provided a very harsh piece of advice on how to deal with the situation. They recommended

threatening and a heavier burden and harsher conditions and even punishment. And we see

that oftentimes as Christians, you know, we, we want people to be judged for their wrongdoing

rather than dealing in empathy and trying to, you know, restore the lost or trying to

bring, you know, convince people of their need of God. We deal harshly. This scenario

played out the way that God intended, but it illustrates the point that often, even

as a king, that we can be led astray. A king can be led astray. We can be led astray because

the desire to follow our friends rather than, you know, he the, the, uh, you know, the recommendations

of the older advisors, he resigned to doing what his buddies wanted him to do. He wanted

to be the man to make the decision. And this choice led to the splitting of the kingdom

of Israel. And the real crime here is that the, the Northern kingdom, the kingdom of

the Jeroboam went directly into idolatry and they eventually are lost to us as the lost

tribes of Israel, all because of this decision of Rehoboam to be the big man, not allowing

the advisors from that, from Solomon to speak into his life and give him wise counsel and

dealing with it, with a, a kinder approach, allowing, you know, God's conviction to deal

with you, with him. And then therefore with the key, the Northern kingdom, if only godly

counsel was taken, if only the spirit of conviction would have won the day, maybe the 10 tribes

of the North would not have been lost. That brings me to my next point, which is the saints.

We are not responsible for the actions of others, but only for the message that we send

and transmit. So now we can remember that generally Alentio means to convince or to

refute. So when dealing with the world, we're to strive to convince the loss that they need

salvation. We are also meant to refute the ungodliness of our culture, but we are not

responsible for the response. So as we look at now, the second point, which is the saints

within the Christian community, believers are to exercise some responsibility over one

another. That is true. But let's look at James in verse and chapter five, verse 19 through

20 on how we're supposed to deal with our brethren. So in verse 19, my brothers, if

anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that

whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover

a multitude of sins. This responsibility is expressed by other mean, the other meaning

of Alentio to correct or to reprove. The theme of this reprove is often seen in the pastoral

pistols and first Titus five 20 second title, second Timothy, rather four two in Titus one

nine and 13 and, and then also in chapter two, verses 15, the process outlined in Matthew

18, 15 through 17 is supposed to be followed this idea of discipline, but in a kind of

way that's going to lead to restoration in Matthew 18 verse 15 through 17. It says, if

Matthew 18:15–17

your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If

he listens to you, you've gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two

others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three

witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to

listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Scripture makes

it clear that the ministry of reproof cannot be undertaken by a person with the wrong attitude.

Paul provides this guideline, those who oppose the Lord's servant, he must gently extract

in the hope that God will grant them the repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth.

Second Timothy two 25 in our ministry of rebuke performed when we see our brother or sister

turn from the pathway that God's word marks out as in the spirit's ministry of conviction.

And it is the knowledge of God's word alone that will bring understanding and lead to

life transforming change. So recently we've seen the the issue that has come up from other

pastors for Mark Driscoll in this in this thing with that the men's conference. So what

we're seeing here is is what should have happened was it should have been done behind closed

doors between the two men, the two pastors. And then if that wasn't going to be enough,

it should have been with some with two or three witnesses. That's what should have happened

before being brought before the whole assembly in the way that it was. Now I'm not judging

anybody. I'm just saying what the scripture here says in verses 15 through 70. This is

what we're supposed to do because the goal is not to say gotcha. The goal is not to say,

hey, look, you're a sinner. You need to repent. The goal is to say, brother, let's come back

closer to the Lord so that we can fulfill the work of the father. As we look back at

Exodus 32 and the golden calf or first Samuel eight and the demand for king or in our own

life, it's dangerous to follow the mob of this worldly culture, especially when it's

in opposition to God's direction. You know, man's wisdom leads us to these weird philosophies

in life. Socialism can provide us in a good example of the dangers of the mob. This philosophy

is always able to sway people's desire for equality and equity or I'm not getting enough

or they have more than me. The reality is that it always leads to the same disparities

that it contends to fight against. But in the end, everyone has less than when they

started except for a couple people at the top, just like the king that's described in

the Old Testament that we read. George Orwell had a tremendous quote and it says, it's always

the women above all the young ones who are the most bigoted adherence of the party, the

swallowers of slogan, the amateur spies and the nosers out of unorthodoxy. This comes

from his book 1984 and I'm not targeting women here, but the interesting thing here is the

emotionality that's that's used oftentimes to get people to rally against, you know,

righteous judgment. So this quote from Orwell highlights something that we're seeing in

our society today. The move to make everything over emotional is the move to push against

our rationality. There's a new wave of radicalization that's targeting our young women and it's

being led in some part by the educated class. So here's something that happened last week

that I thought was pretty interesting and it shows that the way that we're seeing the

violence, the destruction that's happening to our youth today, an anti-Israeli protester

wept as a judge, arraigned her in California on Friday after she allegedly threatened to

murder public officials at a city council meeting. Now you can go and find this video

online. You can hear what she had to say. It's pretty crazy, but Riddipatel, 28 years

old sobbed as she pleaded not guilty to 18 felony counts after she directed comments

to Bakersfield City Council members and the Republican mayor, Karen Goh, for not backing

a Gaza ceasefire resolution against Israel and for installing metal detectors at the

city hall. Patel was ordered to be held on a million dollar bail and stay at least 500

yards away from the city hall. So this is basically what happened. Patel was seen on

this video during the public comment section of the city council meeting on Wednesday of

last week where claiming she had hoped oppressed minorities would guillotine city government

members declaring that even Jesus Christ would kill them and threatening to go to their houses

and murder them. Once a promising athlete, 20 years old, Riddipatel's fall into far

left politics was polluted by her joining the Center for Race Poverty and Environment,

a nonprofit organization that provides legal technical assistance to low income and marginalized

communities. Where she worked as an economic development coordinator, Riddipatel has had

a controversial social media presence and has had a history of going on anti-Hindu and

anti-Modi rants. These kind of ungodly ideologies are what we have to stand against as Christians,

but we have to make those stands to always be one seeking redemption. These kids did

not raise themselves. They were not taught these kinds of ideas by our society alone,

but rather by their parents and by those around them. So God's wisdom shows us in Levitical

law, it gives us guidance on all sorts of things, property rights, preferred judicial

systems, even a sort of a welfare system. God's law is succinct and it's the best form

of law for any society and as Christians we're ultimately called to put nothing before God.

He is to be our center and he was meant to be the head of the Israeli government and

in our lives. Humanity constantly strives to put celebrities and politicians and scientists

and doctors above God. There's a constant drive to supersede God in our society and

we're called by the mob to deny God and our Savior Jesus Christ just to please this mob.

We must strive to keep God at the center and the focus when we are dealing with each other

and the world we must allow the Holy Spirit to convict sinners to repentance and to convict

Christians to further sanctification. In Psalm 1, 1-6 it says, Blessed is the one who does

not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the

company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, who meditates on his

law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its

fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers, not so the wicked.

They are like the chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wickedness will not stand

in the judgment nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over

the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. This brings me

to my final point which is salvation and service. Despite the sins of Israel, God provided deliverance

to the nation through their kingly line. Similarly, we can see the path to salvation is for all

men and women. As sinners we needed the spirit of conviction to prompt us to receive God's

grace and salvation. As Christians we still need the Holy Spirit and conviction to help

us grow closer to God, to be regenerated in Christ, to accept his call for our lives and

to run the race for Christ and to be his emissaries here on earth. As we look at the Old Testament

we see Saul being chosen as a king. He came to be a king in humility, he fell to his pride

and eventually his insanity. But then we see God redeeming the kingly line of Israel by

appointing David as king. Again he was pulled out of his humility, he fell to pride with

his failing with the Bathsheba, but unlike Saul he kept a heart of redemption, he kept

a heart after God. He allowed the spirit of conviction to deal with his heart and so he

ended up repenting after that sin. And it's because of that that we have the kingly line

of King David and we have Jesus Christ our King of Kings who comes. He comes in perfection

to be sacrificed to bring us salvation through his godly service. It is through Christ that

our relationship with God is set right again. It is through the service of our King and

his sacrifice that we have salvation in Jesus name. The sin of the mob is to turn away from

God's teaching and to look only at man's limited understanding. We are convicted by

our sins and we seek a lower bar to live by. We constantly need to turn our eyes back to

the cross and to our Savior Jesus Christ. We need to constantly return to the word and

the truth of the Bible. We need to allow conviction to convince us of our need for Christ. We

need to allow conviction to correct us when we are in the wrong and we allow conviction

to help us guide others and ourselves into a closer relationship with our Father. So

with that if I could have everybody have their bed-army closed wherever you're listening

unless you're driving, it's just as a sign of respect to our Lord because I would like

to give an invitation to anyone who is not saved at this point. If this message has impacted

you, if the spirit of conviction is hugging at your heart right now, then now take the

time to accept Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior. With that, if he is dealing with you,

you can signify that with an uplifted hand, I can't see you, but God will see you. It's

just a simple thing of you recognizing in a physical way that you need Jesus Christ

to be your Savior. With that I would like you to pray a sinner's prayer with me. It's

a simple prayer. It's just, Dear Lord God, I know that I'm a sinner. I repent, I turn

away from my sin and I accept your Son Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior. I thank you

for salvation in Jesus' name, amen. That simple prayer brings you into salvation. Now you

have to allow that spirit of conviction to take you further and further into your relationship

with Jesus Christ. How can you help that? How can you strengthen that? How can you allow

God to convict you in a way that's going to bring you closer and closer to God in your

relationship with him? Well, you can pray. That's going to be crying out to God with

your needs, with glorifying him for the gift of salvation. You can read your word. Read

the Bible. There are several apps you can get, YouVersion, you can get all sorts of

stuff, Logos, all these different apps to get free Bibles. If not, if you want a physical

one, reach out. I'll get you a Bible. But read your word and get in the word. Don't

neglect that time of prayer and meditating on the Word of God, reading the Bible. And

then finally, of course, find a Bible-believing church to not only go to and to plant roots

in but to be a servant in so that you can help them as that church spreads the gospel

of Jesus Christ. And then you can help with that spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You can help other believers as they come into the church to be a service to the rest

of the community. That's a powerful thing. And if you're in Samanar, please come and

reach out. We're actually really excited. We're going to have a new building space come

June 1st. So we're very excited about that. So it'll probably be a week after that that

we'll actually announce our first Sunday in that building. It'll be the Samara building

right down by the BMO in town here, the Bank of Montreal in Samanar. So we're very excited

about that. So if you're in Samanar, please come out to church. If you're not, we have

three thousand five hundred churches globally. I'm sure I can find you a great Bible-believing

church near you. But get into a church and gather with the brethren so that you can be

built up and edified within the body of Christ. So with that, I want to just go ahead and

close quickly with a quick prayer and just, dear Lord God, I give you all the praise and

glory. I pray this message does go out further and further and further at the spirit of conviction

is able to to interrupt people's lives and convince them of their need of Christ. And

I pray that for Christians, the spirit of conviction will impact them in their lives,

that they will continue to sanctify themselves and become more Christ-like and run the race

till the end so they can enter into the kingdom of God and hear those words. You know, well

done, good and faithful servant. So we give you all the praise and glory and we pray that

you help us, Lord God, as we go into our week. And Jesus, we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening.

If you could take the time to like this podcast, share this podcast and subscribe. That really

does help us to get the word out. And I pray that you'd help you be willing to do that

for us and get this message as far as wide as we can possibly get it. Thank you. God

bless. Talk to you next time.