If you know your sin, it was the Holy Spirit who told you.

Steve Brown:
If you know your sin, it was the Holy Spirit who told you. Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life here to let Christians know that God isn’t mad at them. Keep listening, and you’ll hear that because of what Jesus has done, you’re welcomed home into the family of God because of his radical grace, free from the penalties of sin and never alone in your suffering.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Jerry.

Jerry Parries: Yes. Welcome back to this microphone.

Steve Brown:
We are delighted to be here. Now, if you’re just joining us, Jerry Parries is one of the voices of Key Life, I should say Dr. Jerry Parries, but but I won’t. You know, when you’ve got a friend, you get to call them by their first name, but any rate, what we’re doing, this Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, and we thought it would be a great thing to sit down and talk about the Holy Spirit because that’s what this is all about. And if you were listening yesterday, Jerry taught us some important things about the word Pentecost, about the Holy Spirit, some basic things that we need to know. And if you were listening, well, that was Monday. If you were listening on Tuesday, you saw something that hardly ever occurs in the body of Christ, or not much. Two brothers, one Pentecostal charismatic, one Presbyterian and uptight, sitting down and talking about the subject over which we disagree. And it was obvious we love each other. And not only that, it was obvious that we’re writing on the same page. And so, if we would talk to other Christians and we just demonstrated it for you. If you would talk to other Christians about all kinds of subjects, you might be surprised what God does. Okay, Dr. Parries.

Jerry Parries: Yes sir. Yes sir.

Steve Brown:
We, today we’re going to talk about sin, and I’m an expert, sin and the Holy Spirit.

Jerry Parries: Yeah.

Steve Brown:
In John 16, the eighth verse, Jesus says.

That the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin.

What in the world does that mean?

Jerry Parries: Wow. Yes, Jesus did say that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin. And convict the world of sin is simply saying that the Holy Spirit will tell you and share with you what sin is. There’s a Scripture in the Bible in Romans that talks about that when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God. And we used to take that means that people were saved and they, that’s not what it’s talking about. It is talking about worldly people know there’s a God. The Holy Spirit tells them and shares with them that there’s a God, they can look at the universe, they can look at the trees, they can look at the sun, they can look at the moon, they can look at a brand new baby being born. There’s no way that can happen without a God, and they refuse to believe that there’s a God. So, the Holy Spirit comes and convicts us that, hey, there is something greater than you. Now, because I was Pentecostal. Pentecostal, we used to use that word as, say that God would condemn us or convict is condemn us. That’s the conviction is not the same as condemning.

Steve Brown:
As condemning.

Jerry Parries: Right. And so, we believe that the Holy Spirit, some of us in the Pentecostal movement believe that the Holy Spirit came to condemn us. And the Bible says Jesus is very clear that the Holy Spirit does not come to condemn, but convict.

Steve Brown:
Just so you know, you don’t have a corner on that. Presbyterians do exactly, that’s an important concept.

Jerry Parries: Yes.

Steve Brown:
The difference between condemning and convicting.

Jerry Parries: Yes. Yes. Conviction makes you change, condemning makes you feel you’re condemned, you’re going to hell. You, you, you’re going back. And so, you begin to approach God with fear and God is not the author of fear. You know, so you need to approach him in love. And when you know that you have been convicted of something, it causes you to confess that to God because you go back to him and say, a better way, let me say it this way. I saw a story say the difference is that when God, the difference between religion and relationship. When it’s religion, you say, I’m running from daddy, and you hide. When it’s relationship, you call him and say, guess what dad, I screwed up.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. And by the way, that’s repentance.

Jerry Parries: Yes.

Steve Brown:
You know, we make a big thing out and that’s another place we make a mistake. We make repentance change and it’s not, it’s agreement.

Jerry Parries: Right.

Steve Brown:
And the change is God’s business, it’s not ours. We, once we agree with him, understand where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and who we are, the ball is in his court. And at that point, he begins to do things in our life that really does bring change. Isn’t that right?

Jerry Parries: That is correct. And the Bible tells us to confess our sins, but we take that to say, God forgive me that I did this and I did that. That’s not the confession that God is talking about. Confession God is talking about is to agree with him, what he says about your sins.

Steve Brown:
That’s so good.

Jerry Parries: And you agree that Father, I am confessing that my sins are forgiven, that I’ve been washed in your blood. I am confessing that even though I screwed up, you have already forgiven me of my past, my present, and my future sin. I agree with you that I am holy, I am righteous, and I am redeemed.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that is so good and puts a whole ‘nother spin on it.

Jerry Parries: Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
You know, every time I’ve read that in John 16, and we’ve got to talk about what God does with believers as well as the world. You know, you, I’ve heard you say before that it takes more faith to not believe than it does to believe.

Jerry Parries: Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
You want to unpack that for us?

Jerry Parries: Yeah. When you look, I heard one scientist or theologian say, who happened to be a scientist, to not believe in God is like taking a model car that you’re putting together, throw it up in the air and when it lands, it lands as a car. That’s what the Big Bang Theory says.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Jerry Parries: There’s a Big Bang Theory and after the Big Bang Theory, you threw all of these pieces up and at the end you have a model car, that’s just impossible. To believe that that’s what happened, takes more faith to just say, God created the heavens on the earth.

Steve Brown:
And so, when the Psalmist says, the fool is said in his heart, there’s no God. That refers to the Romans passage you were talking about.

Jerry Parries: Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
Because people know and because they know, they refuse to know.

Jerry Parries: Yes.

Steve Brown:
And that’s where the Holy Spirit begins to operate.

Jerry Parries: Exactly. And the Scripture says, when they did not acknowledge God, God just turned them over to say, Hey, if you’re not going to believe, believe what you want to believe. And I don’t want to fall into that category, I want to believe that what God has said is what it is. And he shows you, the Holy Spirit shows you the relationship that we have with God. If you trust any, God will come through.

Steve Brown:
You know, and we’ve covered it a little bit, but when Jesus said that in John 16, Convict the world of sin, the use of the world world means, the word world means, it’s hard to say that, means them. It means those who are on the outside. But this principle, as you have said, you know I love your teaching. One of the things that you teach that I love, that I’ve quoted in a lot of places, And I give you credit when I do. It’s, at least the first couple of times after that I say, as I’ve always said. But you said you will run out of sin before God runs out of grace.

Jerry Parries: Oh, that is so true. And I had a friend of mine that I was trying to teach grace to say to me, Steve. He says, at some point in time God is going to get upset with you sinning. You just can’t keep sinning and keep sinning and keep coming back to God and God, at some point in time, God’s going to get tired of you sinning. And I said to him, well, Peter asked Jesus this question. Peter asked Jesus, how often should I forgive my brother who sinned against me? Just seven times? Jesus said, no, you’ve got to forgive him 7 times 70 in one day, that’s 490 times. Now, if Jesus tell Peter to forgive his brother 490 times in one day, how many times will Jesus forgive us? So, that means that you will absolutely run out of sin before God runs out of grace. For where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.

Steve Brown:
Oh, that’s so good.

Jerry Parries: And so, you can know that.

Steve Brown:
So, going back to the central premise of what we’re talking about, The conviction of the Holy Spirit about sin is not negative.

Jerry Parries: No, not at all.

Steve Brown:
And Christians don’t need to run from it or pretend that they’re cowering in a corner from an evil God. It is a joyous experience of running to him our father. And then confessing where we really are.

Jerry Parries: Absolutely. And the Holy Spirit also, when it convicts you, there’s some things that’s not written in the Bible. Okay. And then the things that are not written in the Bible, cause they, it wasn’t even existing back then. You know, TV or sometimes the Holy Spirit will convict you that you are watching too much of negativity. And that’s when the Holy Spirit tells you that, then you pull up and do something different because the Holy Spirit is reminding you these things are not good for you. And that’s why the Holy Spirit is a great comforter and a great friend.

Steve Brown:
Oh man, that is so good. You know, and I love the way you do this. And we try to do this at Key Life. We take the Christian faith and we make it into bad news. We condemn with it. We look down our noses with it. We pretend and wear masks that we are not sinners, but we’re good people and you can be good the way we are. And we do great damage doing that because this is good news. It’s really good news. It means that God’s not mad at you, that if you run to him, he won’t kick you. He’ll hug you. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve and Jerry. That was Steve Brown and our good friend Jerry Parries continuing to teach us about the Holy Spirit. What a great conversation, and I’m sure we’re going to do one of these again, but we do still have one more day with Steve and Jerry, and you don’t wanna miss that. So, join us again tomorrow, won’t you? Hey, while you’re here, have you been to Keylife.org lately? To borrow a phrase from Steve, it’s, it’s not half bad. Check out Keylife.org/biblereading where you can hear Steve reading entire books of the Bible. In fact, we now have gone live with the entire Gospel of John. Also, check out Keylife.org/simplysermons that’s our latest podcast, and it features digitally remastered full length sermons from Steve. No commercials, no interruptions. What a great way to spend your daily commute. Oh, and if you’re looking for a new read, stop by Keylife.org/store and of course, all of these features are free, thanks to the generous support of listeners just like you. If you’d like to donate, just call 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. If you’d like to send your donation by mail, go to Keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses for the U.S. and Canada or email [email protected] you can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. And of course, now you can give safely and securely just by texting Key Life to 28950 and then following the instructions. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And as always, Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.