Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1708
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, February 25, 1883
“And when He is come, He wiil reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and you see Me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” John 16:8-11.
THE Apostles had a stern task before them. They were to go into all nations and proclaim the Gospel to every creature, beginning at Jerusalem. Remember, only two or three years before they were simple fishermen engaged upon the Galilean Lake—men of little or no education, men of no rank or standing. At best they were but Jews and that nation was despised everywhere, while these peasants were not even men of repute among their own nation! Yet these men were to turn the world upside down! They were told by their Lord that they would be brought before rulers and kings for His sake and that they would be persecuted wherever they went. They were to proclaim the Gospel in the teeth of the imperial power of Rome, the ancient wisdom of Greece and the fierce cruelties of barbaric lands. And they were to set up the kingdom of peace and righteousness.
How happy it was for these disciples that our blessed Lord could tell them that His going away would be for their gain rather than for their loss! For when He was gone, the Spirit of God would come to be an Advocate for them and with them, and by His power they would be able to silence all their enemies and achieve their mission! The Holy Spirit was to be their Comforter, that they might not be afraid, and their Advocate, that they might not be baffled. When they spoke, there would be a power within them suggesting their words, a power with those words convincing their hearers, and a power in their hearers causing the word spoken to abide in their memories—that power would be Divine, the power of the Holy Spirit, who is One God with the Father and the Son.
It is one thing for men to speak, and quite another thing for God to speak through men. The work of proclaiming the Gospel to the world was far too great for the 12, but it was by no means too great for the Spirit of God! Who can limit His power? Is anything too hard for the Lord? The Holy Spirit being their Helper, these feeble men were equal to the task which God had committed to their trust. The Presence of the Holy Spirit was better for them than the bodily Presence of the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus could only have been in one place as to His corporeal Presence, but the Holy Spirit could be everywhere! The sight of Jesus would but appeal to the senses, but the power of the Holy Spirit touched the heart and worked spiritual life and saving faith! Thus, by His own withdrawal and the sending of the Spirit, our Lord furnished His servants for the conflict.
We will, at this time, observe what the Holy Spirit did as an Advocate. The passage cannot be fully understood unless we give it three renderings. But I do not pretend that even then, we shall have pressed from this choice cluster, all the generous wine of its meaning! To my mind, it is a compendium of all the work of the Spirit of God. By our three readings we shall see much—first, the Spirit of God goes with the preaching of the Gospel to reprove men of sin—and so to embarrass them in the presence of the preacher of righteousness. Secondly (and this is a much more blessed result), to
convict men of sin and so to lead them to repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And, thirdly, the ultimate result of the Holy Spirit’s work will be to convict men before all intelligent beings of having been guilty of the grossest sin—having opposed the most perfect righteousness and of having defied the most glorious judgment. We shall try to see the meaning of the passage through these three windows.
I. First, we believe that a promise is here made to the servants of Christ that when they go forth to preach the Gospel the Holy Spirit will be with them TO REPROVE MEN. By this is meant, not so much to save them as to silence them. When the minister of Christ stands up to plead his Master’s cause, another Advocate appears in court, whose pleadings would make it hard for men to resist the Truth of God. Observe how this reproof was given with regard to sin. On the day of Pentecost the disciples spoke with many different tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Men from all countries under Heaven heard themselves addressed in their native tongues! This was a great marvel and all Jerusalem rang with it!
And when Peter stood up to preach to the assembled multitude and told the Jews that they had crucified the Holy One and the Just, the signs and wonders worked by the Spirit in the name of Jesus were a witness which they could not refute. The very fact that the Spirit of God had given to these unlettered men the gift of tongues was evidence that Jesus of Nazareth, of whom they spoke, was no impostor! It was laid down in the old Jewish Law that if a man prophesied and his prophecies did not come to pass, he was to be condemned as a false prophet. But if that which he said came to pass, then he was a true Prophet. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ had promised the outpouring of the Spirit, which had also been foretold in reference to the Messiah by the Prophet Joel. When, therefore, that mark of the true Messiah was set upon Jesus of Nazareth by the coming of the Holy Spirit and the working of miracles, men were reproved for having refused to believe in Jesus.