For Our Good and His Glory — John 16:4-15 (10.04.2026)

All right, if you'll remain standing for the reading of God's Word.

Okay, this morning our sermon text is from John 16, the second half of verse 4 through verse 15.

These things—oh, and when I finish reading, I will say, this is the word of

the Lord, if you'll respond by saying thanks be to God.

These things I did not say to you at the beginning, because I was with you.

But now I am going to Him who sent me, and none of you ask me, where are you going?

But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.

But 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 he, when he comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.

Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. And concerning righteousness,

because I go to the Father and you no longer see me.

And concerning judgment because of the ruler of this world has been judged.

I have many more things to say to you that you cannot bear them now.

But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth,

for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears,

He will speak, and He will disclose to you what is to come.

He will glorify me, for He will take of mine and will disclose it to you.

All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore I said that he takes of mine

and will disclose it to you. This is the word of the Lord.

Good morning. My name is Nathan, and I'm one of the pastors here at Christ Church.

And somehow, by the grace of God, I've called it Christ Church every time I've

been up here for a year. So that's good.

I'm always worried when I step up here, I'm going to say I'm going to welcome

you to New King, which is in Vermont and not Georgia.

But here we are. We've made it a year, and we're so thankful for what the Lord has done.

And we're glad that you are here with us this morning.

So way back in January, which feels like a lifetime ago, in spite of what the

South refers to as ice storms, as Kevin mentioned,

we started in the book of John in a series that we have called That You May Believe.

And that comes from John 20, where John says that the purpose of his writing

this gospel is so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ,

the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

And that's really our prayer. It's our hope here at Christ Church for this church

and for our community, that they would believe and that they would have life in his name.

It's our prayer here that the Lord Jesus would give life to this church and

that we would continue to have life and abundant, that he would grow us,

that he would strengthen us, that he would add to our number.

In many ways, it feels like we have run a marathon over and over again for the

last 365 days. but a one-year anniversary isn't the finish line.

We're just getting started.

For several weeks now, we have been here in the final chapters of the book of

John, this sort of penultimate climax of Jesus' ministry

when he's gathered his disciples together to celebrate the Passover and to give

them some final instructions before he is arrested in just a few minutes

and then put on trial and crucified.

We often refer to this night as the Last Supper or as the Farewell Discourse.

And I was reminded as I was preparing to preach this morning how when we name stories,

in the Scripture a certain thing, or we're just familiar with the Scripture,

that we kind of overlook what's actually happening, that we downplay kind of

the magnitude of the moment and that we don't feel what they were feeling.

And this night in John is really no different.

So I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama at a fairly traditional church.

And back in the 80s and the 90s, churches did these things called cantatas.

Their church choir would do a cantata.

And if you were born past the turn of the century, a cantata is like if you

took like a Southern church choir and a Broadway musical and like you married

them together, that's a cantata.

So you have one at Christmas and you have one at Easter and it tells the story of both.

And these are like elaborate church lady productions.

And so when I come to this night in the gospels,

what often like gets in my mind is like an Easter cantata from 1992,

you know, where like Ben Ass has just sung a ballad about betraying Jesus,

starring as Judas. And so he's like run out the side.

And then Scott Stearns, who's like blonde hair and blue eyed and doesn't look

like Jesus, is washing the male choir members feet.

And like any moment, the rest of the deacons are going to like bust in and arrest

him just as Roman soldiers, you know. And so like, but I want you,

as we talk about John 16, to think about these men.

At this point in the night, there are 11 of them left, and they are real men,

and they have been with Jesus for three years.

And this night, he's gathered them together, and he's told them that he's going

away, and they do not understand the magnitude of what he is saying to them.

They're not idiots. We often talk like these guys are. They're not.

They understand the climate of the day. they understand that the Jewish leadership

is angry at Jesus, a kind of anger that maybe they haven't seen before or experienced before.

They know that it's dangerous that they are in Jerusalem at this point.

And these men gave up everything to follow Jesus.

Literally, they dropped their livelihood to follow this man,

this promised Messiah that.

Some of them declared at the beginning of the gospel is to join him on what

they kind of thought was this kind of grand adventure to overthrow the powers of the day.

And they've watched him feed thousands. They've watched him heal the sick.

They've watched him raise the dead and Lazarus.

Now he's gathered them together. He's washed their feet. He's told them that he's going away.

Last week, we looked at the end of John 15.

It's this unbelievably hard passage where Jesus looks at them and he says,

life is gonna be really hard.

And you and I know, we talked about this last week, that most of these guys

end up dead because they proclaim the gospel after Jesus's resurrection and ascension to heaven.

And here Jesus is. He's looking at them, knowing what's about to happen.

He's continuing to teach them. And he gives us this clue about the emotions

of the group. He tells them, he says, sorrow has filled your hearts.

They are overcome with grief because Jesus has told them that he's leaving.

How can that be? They must be thinking this is the worst news that we could have gotten tonight.

And we know the story. We know what happens next. But unbeknownst to them,

they are on the precipice of a miraculous move of God.

Jesus has gathered them not just to celebrate the Passover or the final Passover

with them, but he's gathered them to encourage them, to let them know that he's

going to send the helper to them,

that there will be, that he will be with them as they lead this movement of

God, like there has never been since, and really like there never was before,

and like there hasn't been since.

Joel prophesies about this day in Joel 2, 28 and 29. He says,

and it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy your old men shall dream dreams

and your young men shall see visions even on the male and female servants in

those days I will pour out my spirit,

Lord may it be so for us Ben just prayed that.

We pray that the Lord would pour his spirit out on Christ's church,

that he would pour his spirit out on John's Creek and Alpharetta and our community,

that we would see a move of God that is inexplicable and overwhelming,

where the lost are found and the called are called out, and that we fling missionaries

to the farthest reaches of the globe,

where we plant churches and we gather together, not just on a one-year anniversary,

but year after year after year, shocked and amazed at what God has done.

And we want to celebrate. And today should be a celebratory day.

But if you'll permit me, I'm going to say the quiet thing out loud.

We know that we're not there yet, right?

We know that this is a prayer about the future. And so we may have mixed emotions this morning.

We are certainly grateful what God has done, but somewhere deep inside of us,

there may be a tendency to think, man, I wish he had done more in the first year.

And here at Christ Church, we're not overcome with sorrow. We're thankful for what the Lord has done.

But I think in this passage, we can have comfort that God has sent us his spirit.

We can sit and think and feel with the disciples on this night.

We can rejoice at what God is doing. And so Jesus identifies the hearts of the

disciples here in John 16.

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 then Jesus lays out for them three ways that the spirit works or will work

when he comes that is to their advantage.

And so way back in the summer, when we were talking about the preaching calendar

and my name got put down in the list, I was like, oh, I'll just have to like

find a passage to talk about.

But then as I started looking at how the sermons were lining up,

just as Kevin talked about the kids, I was like, oh, this is exactly what the

Lord wants us to talk about here on our anniversary.

And so it's comforting to me that on the night of his betrayal,

that Jesus knew that we would be gathered here this morning in this place to

talk about the work of the Spirit in our lives.

So this morning, I'm going to cover three points that I want us to talk about.

Number one, the Spirit works for the good of the church and the glory of Christ.

The Spirit works for the good of the church and the glory of Christ.

Number two, the Spirit works to convict the world.

The Spirit works to convict the world. And number three, the Spirit works to

ground the church in truth.

So first, the Spirit works for the good of the church and the glory of Christ.

Look at verse 4 through 7.

I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you.

But now I'm going to him who sent me and none of you asked 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.

When we talk about the unfolding of scripture, we say that scripture is progressive in its revelation.

So what that means is that if you start reading in Genesis 1 and you continue

reading, that as you read, you will begin to learn more about the grander story of the Bible.

It progresses through and we learn more.

And really, Jesus is saying, my ministry with you, what I've taught you has been the same way.

And so in the earliest days of the Gospels, when Jesus called these men to himself,

and they left their nets or they left their tax collector booths or they left

whatever job they were doing to follow Jesus,

he didn't sit them down and look them in the eye and say, all right,

so you're going to be with me for three years.

I'm going to do a lot of cool things. You're not really going to understand

it, but then I'm going to get arrested. They're going to kill me.

I'm going to be buried in a tomb. I'm going to raise them the third day,

and then I'm going to ascend into heaven.

Now, Jesus wasn't lying to them, but none of us know what's going to happen

in our life, right? We can't bear that news. And so that's what Jesus is referring

to them, that he hasn't told them all that he could tell them.

He's gathered them together to teach them here tonight.

But all along the way, Jesus has fed them piece by peace.

And so he brings them together on this night to say, I'm going away.

I'm going back to the father.

He tells them that life is going to be hard, but the best thing for them,

even though it's sad, the best thing for them is that he leaves because if he

doesn't, then the helper, the Holy Spirit will not come to them.

And why is that? Is this like some weird reason that the Holy Spirit and Jesus

can't be together? Like, are we talking about Batman and Bruce Wayne here?

No, we're not talking about that.

But when the Holy Spirit comes, when the Holy Spirit came, he will characterize

the age of the kingdom of God.

That is to say that when Jesus returns to the Father, when he ascends back to

heaven and he sends the Spirit to earth,

that in the sending of the Spirit, he ushered in that appointed time when the

saving reign of God began to bring about the salvation of every people,

tribes, nation, and tongue.

And so up until this point, salvation has largely been for the children of Israel.

That's not to say that throughout the scriptures or the Old Testament,

that God hasn't offered salvation to those outside of the nation.

But on the day of Pentecost, when the spirit comes down.

We entered a new church age where salvation has been freely offered without

regard to race or nationality or socioeconomics or gender, but that everyone

who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

It's this new marker in what Jesus is doing.

And it's to our advantage, our good, that Jesus returned to heaven and sent the Spirit to us.

Because the Spirit is the means by which the church has grown through the ages.

He has found the lost through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ as

it flowed out of Jerusalem to Judea, through Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Salvation isn't localized in the body of Jesus in Israel, but because the Spirit

has come, we can all share in the salvation of our great God.

Because the Spirit has come, if you're a believer this morning,

you have believed because of his coming.

And furthermore, in this passage and throughout the farewell discourse,

Jesus tells us that the Spirit will dwell in them, that he will dwell in us.

That he will remain with them and with us forever,

that he will teach them by reminding them of Jesus's words and

guiding them in all truth, that he will testify about Jesus,

that he will empower their witness of Christ, that he will convict the world

of sin and righteousness and judgment and that he will glorify Christ.

So how does he do that? Look at verse 14.

It says, he'll take what is Christ and he will declare it to you.

That is the spirit will take what belongs to Christ, what he came to you,

what he came to do, and he will declare it to the disciples and to us.

So why is it that Jesus came?

To accomplish our salvation. So the work of the spirit is to testify to the

world what Christ has done,

to illuminate that which Christ taught and to bring salvation to all that confess Jesus as Lord.

It's for the church's good and for Christ's glory that Jesus returned to heaven

and sent the Spirit to us.

The work of the people of God is the work of the Spirit of God.

And can we not testify today, some 2,000 years after this night, that Jesus was right,

that because the Spirit came, that because he worked, that millions have believed,

have believed, have been ushered into the kingdom of God, sealed by his Holy Spirit.

Let it spur us on to believe that the Spirit of God is still at work for the

good of the church and for the glory of Christ.

Second, the Spirit works to convict the world.

Let's look at verse 8 through 11. 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.

When the Holy Spirit comes, he will convict the world concerning three things,

sin, righteousness, and judgment. And I was reading commentary by Josh Moody,

and I thought that he broke it down really easy, in a way that's really easy to comprehend.

And so he says this, he says, The Spirit proves that there is such a thing as

sin, but we fail to avoid it.

There is such a thing as righteousness, but we fail to meet the standard.

And there is such a thing as judgment and it is reserved for those who fail

to attain it, that righteousness.

And so let's break down what Jesus is saying here.

He says he will convict the world concerning sin because they do not believe in Jesus.

The spirit works in the lives of people because they do not know Jesus.

They don't know who he is.

They don't believe that he is who he said he is, that he's done what he came

to do and what he's accomplished.

I served as a missionary in East Asia after college in my early 20s.

And I remember one time a teammate and I were out in kind of a remote town that

no one was doing any work there. And we were kind of checking it out.

And so I was with a guy named Mark, and he began talking to this lady.

And he asked her if she had ever heard of Jesus. And she said, maybe.

Is that like a new kind of shampoo?

And to this day, I have no idea why she responded that way. Like,

I don't know what was going on there.

But I think the point here that needs to be made is that people may or may not have heard of Jesus.

But when the Spirit works in their lives, they know that they have made mistakes.

And the Spirit works in such a way that he convicts them of sin.

They know that they're not living up to this standard. They may not know what

that standard is, but they know, like, maybe if I really dug deep,

I'm not as good of a person as I thought I might be.

The Spirit convicts so that people can respond in faith, so that they can confess

with their mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead.

Let me just take a moment to touch on conviction in the life of a believer.

The Spirit certainly convicts those who have yet to believe in order that they

may believe and hear that Jesus is the way to remedy their sins,

that he's worked on the cross.

But as believers, maybe some of you in this room, I have struggled with this in the past.

We often struggle with assurance of salvation.

And as I was thinking about the Spirit and how He convicts, I was reminded that

when we are convicted of our sin,

when we mourn that sin, when we move towards repentance and we turn from that

sin, that is a sure sign that the Spirit is living and active in our lives.

The Bible tells us in Hebrews that God disciplines those He loves. He's a good Father.

And so as you experience the conviction of the Holy Spirit in your life as a believer,

let that be a testimony to you that the Spirit is active in your life,

that you've been sealed by Him, and He's trying to make you a better person,

and He is indeed doing that through the work of Jesus. Thank you.

Look at verse 10. He says, concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father

and you will see me no longer.

Jesus was, and he still is, the right standard of righteousness.

We see this talked about throughout the scriptures.

Matthew 5, 17 says, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

In Hebrews 4, 15, he says, but one who in every respect has been tempted as

we are, yet Jesus was without sin.

1 Peter 2.21, Peter says, for to this you have been called because Christ also

suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his footsteps.

Jesus is that standard of righteousness.

And when Jesus lived and he walked on earth in the nation of Israel,

you could have gone to him and you could have pointed to him and you could have

said, this is the standard of righteousness, live like he lives.

But there's a problem with that, right? Number one, Jesus doesn't live in Israel

anymore, so we can't go see him.

And number two, even if we could go see him somewhere in a physical place on

earth, we couldn't live up to his standard, right? Only he could do that.

And so because Jesus has returned to the Father and he sent the Spirit to us,

the Spirit has come to show us that we are not righteous, that we are not like

Jesus, but only Jesus is the righteous one.

And because of the work on the cross, that he has made a way for us to be righteous.

That he took our sin and he gave us his righteousness through the cross.

Look at, or think back to chapter 15.

When Jesus said that the Spirit would testify, who did he say would also testify with the Spirit?

You and me. That his followers would testify alongside of him.

I'm sure his disciples that night, and they did that after the ascension.

But we also are testifying to the gospel. And so the gospel must be preached

with words. There's no flexibility there. But when we think about how the Spirit

leads and convicts the world of righteousness, I think it's an opportunity.

It's our calling as believers to live out the righteousness of Christ,

empowered by the Holy Spirit living in us,

so that the world, so that new believers, so that those who are weaker in the

faith might see our growing conformity to Christ and understand what it means

to live a righteous life.

Because the sphere is working and moving and convicting people of righteousness.

And so we have an opportunity to live out that righteousness so that others

can see what it means to follow Jesus.

The call to come and church plant here in John's Creek and Alpharetta is a call

to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ.

To make our community a better place because people are turning to Jesus and

walking in righteousness.

When we talk about the Spirit moving or our city being transformed,

people's lives being transformed, it's because God is taking sinners and he's

making them righteous through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Look at verse 11, concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

Jesus' work on the cross was the beginning of the end for Satan.

When Jesus comes back, he will wage war and triumph over Satan finally and for good.

He will render ultimate judgment.

Satan is leading the world in this false judgment of what is right and wrong.

It's a judgment that D.A. Carson says is profoundly wrong and morally perverse.

And so what the world says is right or wrong is not what the Lord says is what's right and wrong.

And so because of that, because the world is following this false judgment of

Satan, they are all condemned.

The world is headed towards utter destruction. And so through the work of the

Holy Spirit, convicting people of judgment, he's come to convict them of that.

And Josh Moody fleshes this out a little better. He says, all false religions

begin from the premise that there's not too much wrong with us.

And therefore, for us to be saved only requires a list of rules or rituals to obey.

These false judgments are these morals that are not accurate and true.

Christianity begins with the premise that humanity is by nature destitute,

blind, naked, deaf, and utterly dead in sin.

But it is the work of the Holy Spirit for which we must pray to take our words

and lives and convince the world of the reality of their deadness before a holy

God, that they may cry out to Christ to be saved.

When the Spirit convicts the world of judgment, it declares that Satan will

be cast away and those that follow him will be cast away from God.

But the work of Christ is freedom in that. The Holy Spirit comes and he frees

people from these bonds of Satan.

The work of Christ through the Spirit is adoption into the family of God, into the kingdom of God.

It's a promise that none of us will be left as orphans.

And let me say to you this morning that if you're sitting here and you have

yet to believe on the Lord Jesus, that you would do so this morning.

That you would believe that God has sent to the world his Holy Spirit to convict

you of sin. That you are in rebellion against God because of your sin.

That he sent the Holy Spirit to convict you of righteousness.

That you cannot live up to the standard that God has called us all to live to.

You, that he's come to convict you of judgment, that those who do not follow

the way of Christ will be cast away for all of eternity, separated from God forever.

But Christ has come. Christ has lived a sinless life. He's paid for your sins,

for my sins, by the shedding of his blood on the cross.

And three days later, he rose to life. Because of the finished work of Christ

on the cross, He's made us right. He's made a way for us to be made righteous before a holy God.

The Bible tells us that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and

believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, that we will be saved.

So if you're here this morning, it's my prayer that you would confess that,

that you would believe that, that you would let the Holy Spirit lead you to believe in Jesus.

Lastly, the Spirit works to ground the church in truth.

As we look at the farewell discourse, there are things that are spoken for all

of our behalf, and there are things that are spoken specifically for them. Look at verse 12.

He says, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,

for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears,

he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

I think when Jesus says this to them, he's being very specific to them.

Now, the Spirit does lead us in truth. We'll get to that in just a moment.

But after the resurrection, when Jesus ascends to the Father,

it is these guys, these 11 guys, and later on, Paul, who will,

from a human perspective, build the church of Jesus Christ.

Now, we know that Jesus builds his church. We've already prayed that this morning.

But humanly speaking, they are doing the work.

And so when he looks at them and he says, I have got so much more to say to

you than I can say in the time that you've been with me and the time that we have tonight.

But even if I did have the time, you couldn't handle it. And he says,

the spirit will come and he will guide you in the truth.

I believe that what he is saying here is that when the time comes for the building up of the church,

and I am not with you, It is the Spirit of God that you can trust and believe

that will guide you to preach and to proclaim and to write the scriptures and

to ground the church in the truth by the power of the Holy Spirit working in your lives.

Because what they don't understand is that the church will be built from them.

And so when we flip over to Acts and we read of miraculous things happening,

of the Holy spirit doing miraculous things in them life in their life of these

like scared men who are suddenly standing up in front of hundreds if not thousands of people,

preaching and proclaiming the gospel of jesus weeks after jesus has been crucified,

it is through the holy spirit that they have that empowerment that he is leading

them in truth and so they can stand up with all the authority and they can preach the gospel of jesus.

And it's because of that indwelling by the Spirit that they followed him.

And they did what they were asked to do by the Lord. That they began the church.

That they wrote the New Testament. That they settled theological debates and councils together.

And the Spirit, having been sent by Jesus to the world, continues Christ's mission today.

And the church was built. And the church is continuing to be built.

And so the Holy Spirit is leading us in the truth of the scriptures.

We can trust that he's still doing that, that the spirit of God is still the spirit of truth.

Listen to 1 Corinthians 2, 10 through 13.

It says, These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

For who knows a person's thoughts except the Spirit of that person which is in him?

So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from

God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

And we impart this in words not taught by wisdom, not taught by human wisdom,

but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The Spirit of God is still actively leading the people of God in all truth.

When we gather together on Sundays, or we gather together to have a Bible study,

or we gather with lost people to proclaim the gospel, it is the Spirit of God

who is leading the people of God in all truth.

The world is constantly trying to redefine truth, constantly trying to downplay

the reality of truth or to ignore truth.

But it's the call of the Spirit of God that we must cling to the Scriptures.

It's the Scriptures that we know what is true.

The Spirit of God leads us through to know and to understand,

to read and to hide into our hearts and to follow.

If Christchurch has any hope of surviving for the next 5 or 10 or 20 or 100

years, is because we will listen and follow the Spirit in all truth.

It is because we will cling to the Scriptures. It is because we will hold fast

to the faith once delivered to all the saints.

Here at Christ Church, we share a few similarities to the disciples on that

night when they were with Jesus before his arrest.

But I'll just close with this one. They really had no idea What was about to happen.

For them, they would walk through fires that they couldn't imagine if they had tried to that night.

They're mere minutes away from Jesus being arrested, put on trial, crucified, buried.

For three days, he will stay in a tomb. And on the third day,

he will raise back to life.

They stood on a hillside and watched him ascend into the heavens.

They hid in an upper room. they had no idea what to do next after Jesus left.

And then the spirit of God fell upon them and the world was turned upside down.

They shared the gospel. They planted churches on and on and on until you heard

the gospel and you believed.

They planted churches until a group of people in 1956 from Central Baptist Church

in Gainesville planted a church called Lakewood that was in the country back in those days.

And they continued to plant churches until a missions pastor named Benji called

a church named Ben in Vermont and said, we want to plant another church in Johns Creek.

And the spirit of God moved until so many of you in this room felt him move

in your hearts to move into this place, to plant a church and to do a work here.

And I pray that as God continues to build this church, that we would be on the

precipice of a move of God like none of us in this room have ever seen before in our lifetime.

I pray that God gives us deep roots in the communities of John's Creek and Alpharetta,

that he establishes a people so committed to the gospel and the planting of

churches that generations around the world feel the effects of what he has done in this place.

And it's my prayer that on October 5th, 2075, I will walk into Christ's church,

wherever that may be as a 90-year-old man.

And I will look back and I will be absolutely overwhelmed at what Christ has done in this place.

May he do it. Let's pray.

Father, we know that you know what is best for us far more than we do.

Far more than we know what to ask for, to pray for, to plan for.

We thank you for the gospels that teach us that on the night.