Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - He Will Glorify Me

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

When you’re about to die, you don’t make small talk. You talk about the most crucial, important things. And on the night before Jesus is about to die, he’s talking about the Holy Spirit.  Why is Jesus so constantly talking about the Holy Spirit? I think we see at least two reasons. One is a hard reason, at least it’s hard to hear. And one is a wonderful reason.  I think the two reasons that Jesus thinks the Holy Spirit is so important to talk about, so crucial to understand, so important to have, is because 1) without the Holy Spirit there’s no remedy for our spiritual blindness and cluelessness, but 2) with the Holy Spirit, we can be taken into realms of experience and transformation that we can’t imagine. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 26, 2017. Series: Jesus, Mission, and Glory: New Power. Scripture: John 16:5-11. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in life. Throughout the Bible, there are signs that point us to the Gospel. Today, Tim Keller is looking at how we can discover them and what they teach us. Tonight's Scripture reading is from John chapter 16, verses 5 through 15. But now I am going to him who sent me, None of you ask me, where are you going? Rather, you are filled with grief because I have said these things. But very truly, I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the advocate will not come to you.

But if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. About sin because people do not believe in me, about righteousness because I am going to the father where you can see me no longer. And about 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 the 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 glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said, the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Now when you're about to die, you don't make small talk. You don't talk about the weather

or what your favorite sports team will do next year. You talk about the most crucial important things in your thinking at least. Now Jesus is the night before He's about to die and we've been studying the chapters, chapter 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Jesus' training is at where His disciples just before He's about to die. And one of the things that Jesus is talking about constantly, and therefore it must be extremely important, is the Holy Spirit. If you notice how often it comes up, this is another sermon on the Holy Spirit,

because it's another passage on the Holy Spirit. Why is Jesus constantly talking about the Holy Spirit? I think we learn at least two things here. There's two reasons. One is a kind of, I want to call it negative. One is a hard reason, at least it's hard to hear. One is a wonderful reason. I think the two reasons that Jesus thinks

the Holy Spirit is so important to talk about, so crucial to understand, so important to have is one, because without Him there's no remedy for the spiritual blindness and cluelessness of the human race. But with him, we can be taken into realms of experience and transformation that we can't imagine. You see why I say one is sort of negative, one is positive? Without him, we have no hope of having our spiritual blindness cure cured with him.

We can go to the stars. So let's take a look at these two. The first one is in the first paragraph of the passage. The second one is in the second paragraph. The one that actually is in printed in your bulletin because of my cluelessness. I sent the wrong numbers in to the people who do the bulletin. You just heard it read, but there's two paragraphs. One has more to do with the Holy Spirit's mission to the world as it is, and the second

is more to the mission to us as disciples. Now the first is this. In verses 7 to 11, Jesus is saying something, it's so startling that I'm going to try to find a better way, the best way possible to put it. I think it's so startling when he says in verse 7, you desperately need me to leave. It doesn't quite say it that way, but he says, I tell you, very truly I tell you. I mean, that's Jesus being very, very emphatic there. Very truly I tell you, it is for your good I'm going away. Unless I go, the advocate will not come.

And then later he tells us why without the advocate, they just will not grasp the things he's trying to tell them. Now, I've had people over my, during my years, come to me and say, this believing this Jesus stuff is really hard. Trusting this Christian stuff is hard, but if I could have been there, if I could have actually seen him race last year from the dead, if I could actually have heard him preach, then I would know, then I'd be able to believe.

And this is telling you, telling that person, and you, if you believe that, you're wrong. Because these disciples had been there. They had seen Lazarus, Raston, and dead. They'd seen all this stuff. And they're still clueless. They're still, look at the apostles before Pentecost, before they get to Holy Spirit.

They're constantly misunderstanding. They're constantly fighting. Constantly, and they get to Holy Spirit. They're constantly misunderstanding, they're constantly fighting, constantly, and they were there, and they saw everything, but they didn't get things, they didn't understand things. And so Jesus is saying, I've got to go, so the Holy Spirit can come, and only the Holy Spirit is going to help you finally see the things you ought to see.

He's actually saying, unless the Holy Spirit comes and clears your mind and touches your hearts, you're never going to believe or live the way you ought to believe and live. And so this means, let me just, this is the most startling way I can put this, if you actually could get in a time machine and go back and actually watch, not only Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, but actually see the resurrection. If you could go back into a time machine and watch Jesus

actually rise to the dead, that would not be as transforming an experience as if you receive the Holy Spirit now. It would not be as, if you go back and actually see with your eyes, but you don't have the Holy Spirit, you'd be in the same position as these disciples, only kind of getting it, being startled, not really being able to understand.

Which means on the one hand that just receiving the Holy Spirit is the... Think about what that means. What a transforming experience. Better than a time machine trip to see Jesus. But on the other hand, it's also a way of saying, we really, human beings are really, really dense,

spiritually. And that's why it's not surprising, is it? To see, it says that the mission, one of the missions of the Holy Spirit here on Earth is to go to the world, it says, when he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment. And I think that's a pretty good translation,

some of the older translations say, that the Holy Spirit will come to non-believers and convict them of sin and righteousness and judgment. John Stott, he did expositions on an exposition of this passage many years ago, and I like what he says. He says, the legal term that Jesus is using is to prove the guilt or expose someone.

Here it's translated, prove they're in the wrong. It's like being in a courtroom and proving that somebody's in the wrong. And Stott says these moral categories, this is a quote. The Holy Spirit makes these moral categories which human beings otherwise despise and resist into a solemn reality. So in other words, we human beings don't like to be told that sin and righteousness and

judgment. The Holy Spirit makes these moral categories that we actually tend to resist into a solemn reality that we cannot escape. And the reason why the Holy Spirit is necessary for that, and not just moral reasoning, is because the implication here and the rest of the Bible teaches that there is a spiritual obtuseness, we do not want to see how sinful we are. We don't want to see how flawed we are. Social science has virtually proven empirically what the Bible has always taught, and that is that you have, we human beings,

I won't even say, have an almost, I'm gonna say, human beings have an infinite ability, infinite capacity to do the worst things and still rationalize it in such a way that we still think of ourselves as a good person. We can do anything, the most horrible things, and we still have some way of rationalizing it and coming out and not being convicted of sin, but I'm saying, well, I'm really a good person.

So, here's a person, and by the way, this is on right here, here's a person who says, yes, I work for the mafia, I kill people, but I'm good to my mother. And with the money that I get from killing people, I've built her a wonderful house out in Ozone Park. And I really am not gossiping. I'm just warning you. I am not arrogant. I'm just confident.

I am not abrasive. I'm just confident. I am not abrasive, I'm just straightforward. I am, you know, I'm not a coward, I'm just being careful, or here's one that we do know, I am not, I do not drink too much, I'm just the life of the party. But see, now the world has a word for that one, it's called denial. But the Bible says that all the others wear the indenisable about everything, everything, not just we drink too much. We are indenisable about our arrogance. We're indenisable about our cowardice.

We're indenisable about our gossip. We're indenisable about all those things. We're indenisable about our murder. It's in a good cause. Yeah, I'm still a good person. And so we have this infinite capacity. And there will be things that happen in your life, everybody, that ordinarily should show you your capacity for cruelty

and your capacity for dishonesty. Things will happen that will bring out the worst in you, and you ought to see it, but you won't. You will rationalize it, or you'll get jaded and hard unless the Holy Spirit comes because only by the Holy Spirit can you say, I need God. I need salvation. I shared this last week with the West Side. In the 18th century there were these great awakenings in Britain.

I call it the Great Awakening in the 18th, 1730s under the preaching and forties, under the preaching of John Wesley, Charles Wesley, George Whitfield. And one of the converts in this great awakening was Lady Huntington. She was an aristocrat, a British aristocrat. And so she would invite her aristocratic friends

to come here, these evangelists. Many of them did not like that and they didn't like and they wouldn't come or come back. And we actually have a letter from the Duchess of Buckingham to Lady Huntington, explaining why she was not gonna come to one of these preaching events. And this is what she said, just come down to us, quote, it is monstrous to be told

that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting. And I cannot but wonder that your own leadership should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good breeding. Now, if you can just imagine Maggie Smith saying those words on doubt, Navi, then you got it cold and you got the duchess of bucking him down.

But I want you to think about this. The duchess of bucking him, who just didn't like the gospel, that you're a sinner, that our hearts are filled with sinfulness and you need to be saved by grace like anyone else in the world. She found that highly offensive and insulting. And it is. And she's at one end, you might say, of a spectrum. You're talking about 18th century British aristocracy, the most conservative, the most traditional kind of human culture in temperament. The most hierarchical, right? And finds what the Bible says, what the gospel says, what Jesus says about sin, highly offensive. So let's go to the other end of the spectrum.

Let's go from the most traditional to the most cosmopolitan, the most secular, the most liberal, the most individualistic. Let's go to Manhattan. And here, of course, everybody loves the gospel, don't they? They just love being told their sinners and they need to salvage by grace. No, of course they don't. But guess what? So here's the spectrum, the entire spectrum of human culture, of human temperament, from

ladybucking, I mean, from the Duchess of Buckingham. In other words, from the most conservative, the most liberal, from the most traditional to the most secular individualistic, guess what? There is no society, there is no culture, there is no personal temperament that is prone to be open to what the Bible says about sin. If you believe what the Bible says about sin, if you actually see the sinfulness of your heart to the degree, the Bible says is there, to the degree Jesus there, that's a miracle of the Holy Spirit.

There's no other way. There is no other way. First, Corinthian 12 13 says, no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, and it doesn't mean, of course, that nobody can enunciate the words, but it means that nobody can actually say, I need a Savior, I need a Lord, except by the Holy Spirit. Nobody.

And therefore, without the Holy Spirit, there is absolutely no remedy for the spiritual cluelessness and blindness of the human race. But that's the negative. Here's the negative. Here's the positive. The second paragraph, the paragraph that I left out of the bulletin, but we're preaching on here, is verse 12 to 15. And this is not so much talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit to the world in general, but to, well, to who?

Here's what he says. He says, I have much more to say to you, Jesus says, more than you can now hear or 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. Now, who is Jesus talking to? And the answer, I think of the most all commentators and interpreters over the years, is that when Jesus Christ says, the Holy Spirit is not just going to the world, he's coming to you, and he's going to lead you into all truth. He's

talking at the most primary level to his apostles. Because think about this, when he says, I've got more to say to you. In other words, he's been training them for three years, and now he's been training them tonight. And actually he's going to train them even after the resurrection. But he says, I've got some things to say to you that actually you can't understand. You won't be able to understand. And therefore, I'm sending the Holy Spirit to you to tell you things that I haven't even told you about. And chapter 14 says, and to remind you and help you understand the things that I've already told you about.

If any of you have ever done any training or teaching, you know that this is just natural, this is human nature, people only get a certain amount of what you're telling them. It sometimes can be a little bit disillusioning. By the way, it's not just training, and it's also parenting. You sit them down and you say, ABC, and they say, yeah, yeah, tell me back what I just said, ABC. And then they go off and they do XYZ. And you say, why are you doing XYZ?

I told you ABC. I said, oh, I didn't understand. That's what you meant. That's just natural. I mean, it's also sometimes, you know, your training is wrong, but it's, you know, maybe you didn't do a good job of instructing. But in this case, of course, we have the perfect instructor, Jesus Christ, and He's saying that unless something intervenes, unless somehow we intervene, the apostles who go out into

the world to bring the message of the gospel to the world, that message won't be right. It won't be completely right. And so he says, what you need is you need the Holy Spirit. See how accrucial this is? He can't just send them out and let them essentially get as much of what he's taught them as human beings ordinarily get from their teacher. That won't work because they are the only vehicles for the rest of history, basically, about what Jesus said, what He did, and what it means.

So He says, the Holy Spirit is gonna come, and it actually says, and leads you into all truth, which is really interesting, but obviously it doesn't mean everything that, I mean, I'm sure the Holy Spirit never told the apostles about microbes, for example. Probably didn't give them anything about germs or anything. There's lots of things.

Well, what do you mean then all truth? It's got to mean. Holy Spirit came so that the apostles, when they began to declare the message of Jesus Christ, that that message was now exactly what God wanted it to be. That it was absolutely and all true. That it was the full truth. It was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, which means it was perfect.

Now, where is that? Where is that combination of the Holy Spirit coming and in a sense purifying and cleansing their hearts and their minds so they could understand the training that Jesus Christ gave them. Where is that message? Where is that teaching, that perfect teaching of Jesus Christ that Jesus says, I'm going to the Holy Spirit's going to come and enable you to teach in that way. Well, it's in the New Testament where you have the teaching of the apostles and of their

associates. You have the apost the teaching of the apostles and of their associates, you have the apostolic teaching of the early church. And therefore, in one sense, the ministry of the Holy Spirit and in a very, very profound sense, the ministry of the Holy Spirit to you and me, to not just to the world, but to disciples, is through the Word of God. And we're not going to spend any more time on it because we actually get to it again when we get into chapter 17. But you can go to second Peter where it says that when the people who were writing the Bible

writing the Bible, they were not writing their own opinion. No scriptures of private interpretation, but the authors removed along by the Holy Spirit Peter says. And that's exactly what Jesus is talking about here. One of the biggest obstacles for people to believe in Christianity is that they think they already know all about it. But if we look at Jesus' encounters with various people during his life, we'll find some of our assumptions challenged.

We see him meeting people at the point of their big unspoken questions. The gospels are full of encounters that made a profound impact on those who spoke with Jesus. And in his book Encounters with Jesus, Tim Keller explores how these encounters can still address our questions and doubts today. Encounters with Jesus is our thanks for your gift to help Gospel in life reach more people

with the amazing love of Christ. Request your copy of Encounters with Jesus today when you give at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. So at a you might say the primary level, the ministry of the spirit to the world is to prove the world is wrong about sin righteousness and judgment and open their eyes to what's wrong with them. And then to believers, you might say, he gives us the word of God by which he tells us the remedy for sin.

He tells us how we can be redeemed. But there's more to it. He doesn't just say that. He also goes on and says, and he, the Holy Spirit, and this is verse 14, will glorify me. And this is a kind of literal rendering, he will glorify me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. Now when he moves on and says, the Spirit will glorify me in your hearts and minds. He's talking to the disciples, and as I said, at a certain primary level, we've got to say,

this is still the ministry of the Holy Spirit to disciples so that they would be the perfect conveyors of spiritual truth and the gospel message to the world through the scripture now. But we know, and you're going to see this too, when we get to chapter 17, Jesus, when he talking to his disciples, there's always a second level. You know, in John 17, verse 20, when he's praying, he actually says to his father,

I'm praying all this and saying all this about these here who I'm sending of the world and also those through whom who believe through their Word. I'm praying and saying all this about them, his disciples, his apostles, but also I'm praying for them who will believe through their Word, which is us. And therefore nobody doubts that it's fair to say, especially in light of Romans 8 and other places

where it essentially says this, that when Jesus says the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to glorify me, to take the things you know about him and to glorify him in your eyes, in your mind, in your heart, that's a ministry the Holy Spirit gives to everyone and what does that mean? Now we've talked about glory because it's another theme of these chapters, and we've said sometimes the word glory in the Bible has the sense of importance and of brilliance.

It has a sense of it's important, which means it's a supreme importance. If something is glory, the word glory in Hebrew has the sense of being wavy. And if something is glorious, it means it's of great importance and moment and weight. But the word glory not only means importance, it also has a sense of brilliance, which means attractiveness and it means beauty. And when Jesus says, the work of the Holy Spirit, this ministry, the Holy Spirit, is to glorify me in your hearts. My dear friends, you need this ministry desperately because what it means to glorify Jesus means

to not just have you believe in Him in some general way, but have his importance and his beauty explode in your inner being and change the way which you think and feel and live. Another way to put it is the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to take things you know with your head, abstract ideas, I believe this, I believe this, and make those things real to your heart. John's Edwards puts it like this,

very famous line, John the Edward says, God is glorified not only by his glory being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. Then his glory is received by the whole soul both by the understanding and by the heart. See that? God is glorified not only by His glory being seen. He's one thing to see, to believe, to affirm He's holy, He's good, He's glorious, He's

nothing to rejoice in it. And in order to get this across, I'm going to have to use a metaphor, and I feel a sense of trepidation to even use it. I'll tell you why. Essentially, this ministry, it. I'll tell you why. Essentially, this ministry, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to get you to fall in love with Jesus Christ. Now, the reason I feel some trepidation is because that whole idea is used in Christian devotional, in Christian music. It has a love relationship with Jesus Christ. And I feel like it very often is actually just trying to emotionally manipulate us. It's goopy, it's schlocky, it's sentimental, and yet in this case, it's also biblically grounded in the idea of, from in the old and new testament of God being our spouse.

And yet it very often it's used just to give you a good feeling. Well, I'm giving it to you. Yes, of course, I want to touch your heart, but I'm giving it to you just to help you understand what this ministry is. Because when you, not forgive me, forgive me, when you're in love with somebody, I'm going to use my personal pronouns. Now, I'm going to use my personal pronouns. When you're in love with somebody, you've been in love with them for a long time, and you go to a movie, but they're not there. You go to a movie and she's not there,

and yet you're not watching the movie by yourself. You're immediately thinking what she would hate, what she would love, what she would make her laugh. And you know why? This is the sociology of knowledge. Sociology knowledge is this academic discipline, the books are impossible to read, they're impenetrable, but I think this is what it's saying.

That you tend to find most plausible the ideas of the people that you most admire and love. That when you are in love with somebody, that person's loves, that person's hates, that person's beliefs tend to get into you. They get into you and you take them everywhere. Now, if you've been in love with somebody for a long enough time, you don't have to, she doesn't have to be there, or he doesn't have to be there. She doesn't have to be there because their responses are part of you.

When you fall in love with somebody, you see the facts about them, and somebody else sees the facts about them, but you find those facts beautiful. What does it mean to have the Holy Spirit glorify Jesus Christ? It's not just to see who He is, but to rejoice in it and to find it so attractive that your heart goes out to Him and so that everything about him actually begins to inform the way in which you do everything. And let me get this down.

If someone criticizes you, slanders you, and you can't get it by it, you just can't, your reputation has been hurt. You know what's going on there? It's the opinion and the approval of other people is more glorious to you and more beautiful to you, more life giving and attractive to you than the opinion of Jesus Christ. These other, if you're overworking, if you hate your body image because of, you know,

you don't like the way it looks, if you're bitter because someone is wronged and you can't get by the bitterness, in every case, Jesus Christ is an idea to you. But there's other, the approval of other people, the opinion of other people are as more real to your heart, more life giving, more attractive than Jesus.

As Jesus is an abstraction. The job of the Holy Spirit is to make him a reality, an embodied reality. And to the degree he is, to that degree, you're going to be able to get past your addictions. You're going to be able to get past the criticism. Just recently, Kathy and I watched a remake, a TV show, remake of an old Agatha Christie play, which is, by the way, got a very dark ending.

And at the very end, there's this couple, this married couple. And the wife reveals that their only son had died in World War I, and because the father had actually lied about his age in order to get him in, and then he went and died, that she could never forgive him, that all love was gone, and that therefore even though she wouldn't divorce him, there'd be no love, no intimacy at all, no love at all, because nothing could replace the love of my son that you took from me." And then she says, soon, but if you want to have a mistress that's fine and he says, but I don't want a mistress on what you your love, nothing can replace the love of my wife

for me. And of course it's terrible. They're all devastated. And of course it's agatha Christie, so it ends in death and I won't tell you any more than that. But as I sat there looking at that, watching that, I've been a pastor for 45 years and I've sat with people who are devastated by similar things. It's devastating. But here's what I know. This one person was saying, nothing can replace the love of my son. And so I'm going to

be bitter. I'm going to be dark. I'm going to be, you know, I'm, and the other guy was saying, nothing can replace the love of my wife. So I'm going to be bitter and it's going to be dark, there is something. Be careful. When the love of Jesus Christ starts to flood your heart, it goes into parts of your heart that you didn't even know were there. Deeper than any sons love, deeper than any spouses love. It goes deeper. That's all I can say.

And it's the only thing that can possibly keep... I mean, I was watching this and I was saying, there's only one hope and that's the love of Jesus Christ. Oh, not that the love of Jesus Christ would actually get rid of the grief, but it would keep the grief from just destroying them, which it was doing. Because it is a greater love than the love of a son. It is a greater love than the love of a spouse. It's greater. When Paul sees the racism of Peter, he doesn't say, Peter, you're breaking the no racism rule, which he could, there are places in the Bible to talk about.

Instead, he says, you're forgetting the gospel that you're a sinner, say, by sheer grace, by the grace of Jesus Christ. How can you feel superior to anybody? When Paul're forgetting the gospel, that you're a sinner, say, by sheer grace, by the grace of Jesus Christ. How can you feel superior to anybody? When Paul talks to the message, when Paul talks to the Corinthians, and he says, I want you to give more of your money away than you are right now, he doesn't say, well, don't forget the Bible says, Ty, he could have, instead what he says is, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look at what he's done for you. He was rich, he became poor for you.

When he's speaking to husbands in Ephesians 5, husbands in that pagan society looked at their spouse as just, you know, I marry a woman for status and I go get my intimacy and my fun elsewhere. And he was saying, no, no, your spouse, you've got to cherish your spouse, you've got to be faithful to your spouse. He could go to the tank, commandments, no, your spouse, you've got to cherish your spouse, you've got to be faithful to your spouse. He could go to the tank, commandments, that's not like a commit adultery. He says, you know that Jesus Christ is our spouse, and he sacrificed for us. And he did everything for it. What is Paul doing? In every case, he's saying something about the beauty of what Jesus Christ has done, the power of what Jesus Christ has done, and actually waiting for the Holy Spirit to glorify Jesus in the hearts of the listeners, and he knows that's the only way you're going to become more generous, that's the only way you're

going to become faithful, that's the only way you're going to get over your racist attitude, that's the main thing that changes you, is that happening to you? Do you know the difference with changes believing in Jesus in some general way, and the ministry of the Spirit to glorify Him in your heart. And I'll ask Lee, here's a question. I've had people when I talk about this say, wow, well, how can I know that this is really a true offer to me?

What, why would it even be available? What would we, why, we certainly don't deserve it? Explain to me, I've had people say that they explained to me, prove to me that this is really something that's available to me. Well, I think you can, though it's buried in probably one of our puzzling texts in our text, parts of our text. It says in verse eight, when he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong, which is a good translation of that word, about sin and righteousness and judgment. Now most of us, I've already talked about this,

it's not that hard to understand when it says, the Holy Spirit will come to the world, the non-believers, and convince them that they're wrong about sin. Prove to the world that they're wrong about. Why? Because the world doesn't want to believe their sinners. So that's easy.

I'm going to prove to you through Jesus Christ who says about sin because people do not believe in me. I'm going to bring, the Holy Spirit is going to bring Jesus Christ, his person, his work, his example, home to them, discernment on the Mount, home to them, to show them their sinners. But what about the second one? When he comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about righteousness. What does that mean?

Now, actually, I'll just let you know that the commentators are all over the map on this. Nobody quite knows. Because it actually says, prove the world is wrong about righteousness. There's a tendency to say, well, what it's saying is, the Holy Spirit will come and show the world that they need to be righteous. So that's not exactly what it says.

It actually says what it says, what this translation brings out, that the world's thinking about righteousness is completely off, and the Holy Spirit is going to show them it's off. What is that? How? Well, take a look. It says, in verse nine, about sin them it's off. What is that? How? Well, take a look.

It says, in verse 9, about sin because people do not believe in it, about righteousness because I'm going to the Father. Isn't that interesting? Here's my question to you, ex-Ageats, out there, to those of you who like to interpret the Bible. What is wrong about the thinking of the world regarding righteousness that the Holy Spirit could correct by pointing to Jesus Christ standing before the Father's throne? Why would that be a corrective to how the world thinks about righteousness?

Here's my best guess, and it is just a guess, but here's my best guess. Don't forget that Jesus Christ is the first advocate in John 14, and here, the Holy Spirit is called the advocate, but in 14 he's called another advocate who is the first advocate, Jesus is. And you remember what an advocate is? An advocate is a defense attorney, as it were. And we're told that when you become a Christian and you believe in Jesus, he stands before the throne of the Father

and he represents you as your advocate. Charles Hodg of Princeton gave that great example and if you were here some weeks ago, I used it here, where he says, well you think about it, if you're on trial in a court and you get up before the judges and the jury, who do they really see? They really see your advocate.

If your advocate is brilliant, you look brilliant. If your advocate is stupid, you look stupid. If your advocate is successful, you're successful. Your advocate is failed. Fails your... And then Hodge says, you're lost in your advocate. There's a sense in which the judge and the jury don't really see you.

They see the advocate. And that means when the Father looks at Jesus Christ, and He sees the beauty of Jesus, the perfection of Jesus, and then He looks at you in Christ. He doesn't see your sins, He doesn't see your flaws, they're gone. It's a completely different approach to righteousness, by the way, being righteous in Jesus, being righteous because of Jesus' death and resurrection. He's gone to the way. Being righteous in Jesus, being righteous because of Jesus' death and resurrection, he's gone to the Father. That's something that the world just took

to can't understand. But you can, first, Peter 3, 18. Jesus Christ died once for sin, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God. The righteous for the unrighteous. See, at the end of his life, how is he being treated shamefully? He deserves

to be rewarded, but he's punished as a criminal. He deserves to have honor, but he's treated shamefully. In other words, Jesus Christ who was righteous was treated as unrighteous, so that you who are unrighteous could be treated as righteous. And then included in that is the Holy Spirit. You are my beloved child, whom well pleased. He said that Jesus the baptism the father said down came the Holy Spirit and now God says to you, in Jesus and only in Jesus, you're my beloved child whom I'm well pleased. And that's why you can have a Holy Spirit. I had a friend named Frank Barker, still alive very old now. And he tells this story that back in the long time ago, probably the 40s, no, it was the late 50s.

He was in the military, he was a Navy pilot. And he was also very religious, he'd always been very religious. And he decided while he was still the military to start going to seminary because he was trained to be a minister. And when he was in seminary, he met a chaplain who was also taking courses there. And at one point the chaplain said, Frank, you're really not very...

You're kind of anxious all the time. And Frank says, yeah, I know. I don't know why. I'm just trying really hard to be a good Christian. The chaplain says, hmm, that's really not Christianity, Frank. Christianity is not you giving God a perfect righteousness The chaplain says, hmm, that's really not Christianity, Frank. Christianity is not you giving God a perfect righteousness and then God blessing you. Christianity is God giving you a perfect righteousness

in Jesus Christ, and then you living for him. And Frank said, I've never heard that before and the chaplain took him to places in the Bible, and Frank actually says he wrote a kind of a biography years later that he felt his burden come off. He saw the beauty of what Jesus Christ had done for him. He saw the beauty of himself in the eyes of the father in Jesus Christ.

He saw the beauty of the gospel in the anxiety went away because in a sense, his burden fell off. And at one point he says the chaplain, you know this is great, but what I want to know is why Martin Luther didn't understand this. The chaplain said, that's interesting, I got this from Martin Luther.

And I said, he said, but I took a course at the seminary last year of semester, and I read a book by Martin Luther and there was nothing in there about it at all, about any of this stuff. And so the chaplain says, why don't you go back and read a book by Martin Luther and there was nothing in there about it at all, about any of this stuff. And so the chaplain says, why don't you go back and read that book? And he says, so, Frank says, I went back and I got the book out and there on every page was the gospel.

Underlined by me, highlighted by me, why didn't I get it? The Holy Spirit had not at that point glorified Jesus to him. Is anything I'm saying moving you, if it is, I know it has not got to do with my skills of preacher, which is actually, I don't feel, is very high today. It's the Holy Spirit. And so if anything I'm saying is moving you, here's what I want you to say to him. Keep talking to me about this, until I have the peace like a river that comes from seeing

the glory of what Jesus Christ did for me. Let's pray. Now Father, give us a desire, not just to see your Son's glory, but to rejoice in it, not just to believe in it in some way, but to actually have it become such a reality that we become more and more like Him. He's the one. He's the one. It's an incident that we pray all this and ask for all this.

Amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, we invite you to consider becoming a gospel and life monthly partner. Your partnership helps more people discover the transformative power of Christ's love through this ministry. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 1997 and 2017. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life Podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017,

while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.