I want to get to this part in the message where we're talking about the Holy Spirit. And I want to make sure that we hear this right.

And I think if somebody hears Christians talking about the Holy Spirit of God, we think that it's somehow similar or related to those things, that the Spirit of God must be somehow this little spooky thing going on. I want you to understand that it's not like that. You see, we are like, you've got your body, you've got your mind, we think of those things. You say, oh, I need to eat healthier. Oh, I put on a few pounds.

Oh, I'm tired. That's us talking about what our physical body is feeling or needing or doing, right? But then you say, well, I want this, I desire that. That's us thinking. That's like talking about our mind.

That's the mental part of us, that conscious part of us. It's not just animal instincts, like a bear in the woods saying, I'm hungry, I know where I can go to the river and find a salmon and get it out of the water. That's just kind of that animal instinct. But here we have these human desires, we have these human needs and wants and these things that we do. That's something that's unique to us as human beings where we have this cognitive ability to sort through things and think through things and apply logic and reason and all that stuff.

But then there's this different part of us, this immaterial part of us that we just can't quite pinpoint. And science hasn't been able to decide where it resides in us. But there's a spiritual nature of who we are. And it might seem weird to people in the world to think about this, but really, when you get down to it, it's hard to deny that there's this eternal component to us. There's this part that's not my mind, it's not my physical body, but it's that eternity part of me.

It's that part that will continue no matter whether I'm alive in this body on this earth or whether I've passed on. We just had a celebration of life this week for one of our. Well, actually our longest running church member, Ellen, she had been here since 1953 as a member when she was a teenager. It's a long time. And I talked in that about how we have this idea of death that says, well, this person has died.

Jesus didn't talk about death like that. He talked about it like they had fallen asleep. But not that they fell asleep to wake back up again, but they fell asleep, were asleep on this earth. But there's this eternal part of us, our spiritual part, that continues on forever. Jesus said he's building a place where we can dwell with him in eternity.

That one day when time on this earth has run its course and God the Father decides that it's now time for, like, I'll think of it as phase two, you know, like, better than this earth, he's bringing the new heavens and the new earth. It's that spiritual part of us that he will create a new heavenly body for. And we don't understand that. In fact, the Apostle Paul says now we see it dimly, like we barely understand it, but one day we'll see it clearly and we'll understand it completely on that day. And so I can't tell you much more about it than that.

I don't know it. I mean, there's a few other things in Scripture, but that's not our point today. But I want us to understand or get this grasp a little bit that there is a spiritual component to our existence, and it is that spiritual component that both lives forever. Of course, we've talked about this before. There's two options for eternity.

One, for those who have rejected Christ their entire life on this earth, he says, I won't force you to be with me in eternity. We call that place hell. The place where God has removed his presence from that place is hell. Sometimes we see glimpses of hell on earth. We see places on earth where it seems like the presence of God isn't as strong there, where God hasn't for some reason or another.

Maybe it's judgment over how they're living, or maybe it's because people have pushed God aside. But we see places on this earth where it seems like hell on earth. Fortunately for us who believe in Christ, that's the closest thing we'll ever see to hell. We will never experience hell in all of its reality because we've been saved from that, because we've walked with God on this earth. And then we see places on earth where it looks like the very hand of God, the blessing of God, is in that situation.

As believers, that's what we pray for in situations where somebody's sick or unwell or needs some kind of provision, and we pray for the hand of God in that situation. And we see God move in a supernatural way. For us, that is, heaven on earth is a little glimpse of what heaven looks like. And for some people, though, who reject God ultimately That's the closest thing they will ever see to heaven because they've rejected the God of heaven and he won't force them in eternity to be with him. But that spiritual component that we have, the part that lives forever, is more than just that.

You see, God is with us. He promises to be here, all around us. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would be with us everywhere we go. That means that spiritual component or spiritual part of our nature is the part that connects with God. We can't connect to God face to face like I'm seeing you and you're seeing me, but we can connect with God through the Holy Spirit, the spiritual part of us.

When you pray, you're praying. Sometimes you pray silently. You're in a room by yourself, you're in your car, you're out working or doing whatever it is, and you're lifting up a prayer to God. It's not that we just think that. It's just some thought that echoes in our head and something happened.

We actually believe that that prayer goes somewhere, but we don't believe that it has to go far. It's not like it goes into outer space or across the universe or even around the globe. We believe that God hears that instantly and that he receives that prayer. And it's because of the spirit of God that's in our midst, that's with us, that indwells in our. In our very being and fills us with his presence.

So when I talk about a spirit, I want us to understand it's not like that spooky Halloween kind of spirits that we think of. It's not like the evil spirits that Jesus dealt with in the scripture is where somebody was entirely possessed by an evil spirit, was totally out of control, where they had no control over their own body, their own mouth, or their own ability to go and do what they wanted. It's not like that. You see, you can push out, reject, or compartmentalize the Holy Spirit in your life. I don't recommend that.

I don't believe that's a good thing. But yet many of us do that. You see, we'll tell the Holy Spirit. Well, I want you to be my advocate. I need you to stand up for me.

I need you to help me just easy with that convicting of sin. You see, I like some of those sins in my life. I'd like to keep some of them. Do you want to raise your hand and shout out which sins you want to keep? No, I'm just kidding.

But seriously, like, if you were to be honest and Sit down and write it. You'd be like, okay, I kind of like this one. You know, I think simplest one might be gluttony. Like, most of us have no problem with gluttony. When it comes down to it, we really enjoy eating good food more than we need calorie intake wise, sugar intake wise.

Some of it's the fault of the people that make our food in this country. It's, like, terrible stuff. That's why I like, what Robert Kennedy was trying to do is he was running for president. Now he pulled out of that race, but he's supporting Trump. But I liked, like, so much of his platform that was focused on getting our food supply healthier and getting the junk and the chemicals out of it.

I love that. Like, we need that as much as any other issue that's going on in this country. You know, we really do. It's killing us, our food supply, but we just keep going after it more and more. Part of it's not your fault.

They make that food to be, like, addictive. They're creating addictive things within the food so that you just want more and more of it. Hmm. Okay. Maybe God gives me a pass on the gluttony one.

It's not totally my fault, but there's some other sins that I really like. There's some other sins you probably really like. We call them guilty pleasures. We call them, well, this is just a habit I haven't been able to kick. And so we tell the Holy Spirit, hey, could you just kind of leave me alone on those things?

I still want to hold on to those things. You can clear the hatred I have. You can clear the anger that I have towards bad drivers, you know, or whatever it might be. You can clear that out of my life. That's good.

I want to be better. I want people to see me in a good light. I don't want them to see me as a terrible person. But these hidden things that are over here, could you just let me keep those? And you see, we're able in that way to shut out the Holy Spirit of God.

Then there's other times where we might say, I want to be a little bit more like Hector that I met outside the church. I just want to be bold and fearless. I don't care if people think I'm crazy. And then once it starts happening, we're like, whoa, Holy Spirit, hold on a second. Like, I might lose a couple friends over this one.

They might think I'm insane. If I start just talking about the spirit of God living in me. You know what? Maybe can we tone it down and be a little more mainstream God? Is that okay?

And so we try to kind of compartmentalize where we allow the Holy Spirit in our lives rather than freely giving him free reign and rule. But Jesus said that the Holy Spirit, when he arrives, he would be considered not just our advocate, but the spirit of truth. You see, truth is something in this world that is kind of countercultural these days. Let's look in chapter 16. We're going to look at verses 8 through 13 and talk a little bit about that.

John 16, 8, 13. When he, the Holy Spirit comes, he will prove the world wrong concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I'm going to the Father, and you will see me no longer. And concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will tell you what is to come.

Like truth. We need truth today. It's amazing that we have such an ability to look things up on the Internet. Phones that we carry in our pocket. There's always right there.

Maybe you're not just like me, you know, but here it is. It's in my pocket. I don't even want the thing on me right now. I try to leave it in my office when I preach, and I forget because I'm just so used to it being in my pocket. If I go out to the car from the house, I sit down in the car and I can tell you, like, am I sitting on my wallet?

Good. Check. Do I have my AirPods case in case I want to listen to something or put them in to make a phone call? Check. Do I have my phone?

Oh, I don't feel it in my pocket. It's not where it always goes. I need to go back in the house and get it. Like, I don't even need it. I've got a watch that has cell service on it, and I can get phone calls and send text messages from my watch.

And yet I feel like, oh, I need this phone in there, you know? And so because why I might need to look something up and see if it's true or not. Or I need to say, like, what song was that that was playing on the radio and I just want to find it out. And I've Got an app that'll tell me what it is. We have such an ability to find truth, to look up truth on anything, and yet we really want to hear what we've already wanted to hear so many times.

We kind of want it to just confirm our own biases and opinions. But it's worse than that. You see, there's an attack on truth that's bigger than yours or my ability to find the truth. There's an attack on truth that's going on. I mean, I've read before.

I recently reread Orwell's 1984. If you've ever read that book. A lot of you, it's an older book, so I know a bunch of you have seen it. And it's scary just how, like, how real it is. It's not a perfect picture of where we live today.

But the government in this book had something that they called the Ministry of Truth. Anybody remember this? You've heard of this in this book? It's a novel. It's a fiction novel.

They call it kind of a dystopian tale of what the world could look like if they continued going down a certain bad path. And I think we're headed in that way on some of these things. This Ministry of Truth that the government created in the book 1984 was basically a disinformation ministry. You know, it was. It was where the government would scrap anything that came up in the news or in old history books.

They would rewrite over it because it didn't fit the narrative that they wanted to be out there today. You know what's funny to me on that one is not only did the Biden administration in May of 2022 create something called the Disinformation Governance Board, which is essentially what I think of as a Ministry of Truth, they also have backdoors into websites like Snopes, which is supposed to be the ones that tell you whether something's true or false. They have backdoor access into Wikipedia so that they can adjust articles and change things to suit them. And I think one of the biggest intelligence agencies in our country has the ability to tell us what truth is. These websites you might go to, or you're on social media and it tells you about fact checkers like Reuters or.

Or all these other fact or fiction websites or whatever it is, and it'll tell you. It'll give you a little meter on whether something was true or not and how they determined whether it was true or false. Like, who says that you are not lying to me on all these things and making it into some kind of a propaganda. You've actually got things like these people that they spend their whole job, their whole day is going out. They're finding something that isn't convenient to whatever narrative that they want the world to believe.

And their job is to adjust it, massage the facts so that it presents the narrative they want us to believe in and agree to. One of my favorite movies, it was from 2007, is a mark Wahlberg film. It's called Shooter. He's a sniper that was retired from the military. And they frame him as if he had shot a president of another country that was visiting our president.

And so he goes through this whole movie trying to prove who is behind the conspiracy. And it turns out there's this high level senator from out west somewhere, and he's just, you know, just pompous and arrogant and he's controlling all these situations. And they kind of laugh. They're having their little snifters of brandy or whatever sitting around a fireplace in this big cabin. And he thinks that he's finally won this war against the Mark Wahlberg character.

And he's sitting there and he says, truth. Truth is what I say it is. It's a great line just before Mark Wahlberg starts cleaning up the rest of these guys that are left. But I do love that movie. It's a good movie.

But I think of that guy and I think that's the mentality of the world. Truth is whatever I want it to be. And yet what does Jesus say the Holy Spirit is going to do? He's going to convict the world of truth. He's going to tell the world where we believed in a lie.

Now, I hinted around at government. I don't even think it's theories. It's just the conspiracy that is conspiracy. Facts really, like these things have been proven to be true and admitted to be true that they control these things. And yet we just choose to ignore that and turn on our mainstream media.

But that's not what I came here to talk about. I'm just trying to show you how much there's a war against truth. And really it's a war against God. Because if the Holy Spirit is the one that guides us into all truth, then our war against truth is a war against God. It's because people, truth is inconvenient to them, and so they decide that they need to shut it down.

Ultimately, what they're trying to do is to relegate God not just to the backseat, but so far removed from our society that we can say we've graduated beyond him. And the thing is, what Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do was not only would he convict us of truth, but that he would show the world about things like sin and righteousness and judgment. He said, concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. You see, the problem with the world is they have decided that Jesus must not be real. They don't deny that he was an actual person.

They don't try to say that that's fiction. They just say, well, he must not have been born of a virgin. He must not have been the Son of God. He might not have even died. Or if he did die, he surely didn't rise again.

He didn't ascend into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. Those are the things that they will deny about Jesus Christ. But Jesus says that he will convict the world of that. You see, the main sin is not the sins that people commit in their lives. It's not like there's a list of sins.

I mean, I know there's the Ten Commandments, but it's not like God has this list of sins. And he says, well, because you broke all these rules, you're therefore a sinner. You're an evil person. No, what Jesus says is the big sin that people have. The first one, the primary one, is people who have chosen to reject him as their savior.

When people refuse to believe in Jesus, that is the sin that must be dealt with. That is the sin that the Holy Spirit first brings conviction on people's lives. When they hear the word preached, the Holy Spirit speaks to them and says, you are either going to accept this and you're going to bow the knees of your body and your heart to it, and you're going to say, lord, I understand that I have sinned because I haven't believed in you, or they're going to reject that. The fear in rejecting the ministry of the Holy Spirit is that the more you tune him out, the easier it gets every time to tune his voice out and to say, I don't need to hear you. I'm not going to listen to this.

But then the next ministry that the Holy Spirit does concerning truth is that he says not only concerning sin because they don't believe in Jesus, but concerning righteousness. You see, the next step is that he would convict people once they believe in Him. He would convict them of their sins, that he would show them where they have sinned against him, where they have been living in a way that's contrary to how God created them to live. You see, we find ourselves so many times, if we look at what the scriptures say and we read it, we realize we're not living according to these words that God has given us. There's so many times where Jesus tells us to do something, care for your neighbor.

Care for those who are unable to care for themselves, those who are the weakest within our society. Sometimes he calls them widows, sometimes he calls them orphans, aliens or strangers or foreigners or sojourners in the land. He tells us that those who are in need and have no ability to take care of their own needs, we must go out and do that. If you have the ability to render assistance, do so. He famously told the story when somebody questioned him on that.

They said, how can I love my neighbor? He says, well, you know what? I'll tell you. They said, who is my neighbor? And he says, I'll tell you who your neighbor is.

And he tells the story of the Good Samaritan and how initially two different righteous Jewish people had walked around a guy that had been left for dead, beaten and bloodied on the side of the road after he had been robbed. And they walked around him because they didn't want to become ceremonially unclean by touching a bloody, perhaps a corpse. They weren't even sure if the guy was alive. But then a Samaritan, one of the people that this Jewish man probably would have hated the most, that was the man that stopped and not only rendered aid, but placed the man on his donkey, carried him into town, paid for him to stay at an inn, and to be bandaged up and taken care of. And he says, if the man has incurred any further debt, when I return from my journey, I myself will pay it out of my own pocket.

See, Jesus said, that's the kind of way that you care for your neighbor. And if you wonder who your neighbor is, when you find someone in need and you're the closest person to them, you're that person's neighbor. Now go and do likewise, is what Jesus says. And so when we think of righteousness, it's not just a list of don'ts, but it's also a list of do's. There's lots of things that Jesus said we should do, and when we fail to do that, we're living in sin.

You're not living life by the Spirit when you're guided by selfish or fleshly desires. Finally, Jesus said that the last thing would be concerning, he had said, concerning sin, concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment. Because the ruler of this world has been condemned. Ultimately what Jesus said is that Satan's going to reveal the Holy Spirit is going to reveal that Satan has been given a certain amount of reign or ruling space in this world. There are people who have willingly given their lives over to the rule of Satan.

They wouldn't believe that that's the case. But ultimately, when you're not being governed or allowing your life to be led by the spirit of God, who is leading it. See the original problem in the Garden of Eden, the biggest lie that was ever told, the biggest mistruth or the biggest thing that where truth didn't have its reign was in the Garden of Eden when God had created this paradise for Adam and Eve and for all people to live in there. But Satan came up, he slithered around this tree and he spoke to Eve and he said, God's been lying to you. God knows that this is not just a good tree.

This is the best tree in the garden and if you don't eat it, you're missing out. They began to listen to the serpent. They began to listen to Satan rather than listening to the word of God. And as they did that, the one that was governing their lives was the words of Satan. You see, the Holy Spirit comes to counteract that and he begins to show us that Jesus has defeated Satan and that in the end Jesus is the one who rules and he's put this to death.

We don't have to listen to Satan. We don't have to live by that same consequence of sin that Adam and Eve had. The Holy Spirit convicts us of the sin in our lives. The Holy Spirit shows us that Christ has come to save us, but not just save us from our sins, but to regenerate us or give us his new life. And then from there he will show us how to live.

So as we look at the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control. As we look at those things, we think, how in the world can I live those things out? How in the world can that be the model of my life? And the truth of the matter is it's only by the power of the Spirit of God, it's only by the power of the Holy Spirit that we can have all those things exhibited in our life. And as we are filled with the Holy Spirit of God, as we give ourselves over to that and allow him to lead us and guide us, he begins to fill us with those things.

We might call it a proof that he fills us. But I talked last week. I don't Prefer that language for it. You don't need to prove to anyone they will see it by your fruit. Jesus said, you know a tree by the fruit that grows on it.

You recognize that fruit, you know what the tree is. And so you'll recognize somebody that's filled by the Holy Spirit. When you see these things exhibited in their life. If you don't see these things exhibited in your life, my question to you is, which side of those guardrails have you slipped over? I don't think if you don't see these things in your life, I don't think that you've fallen too far to, to one side where you've just kind of gone full out of control in the Holy Spirit of God.

And I don't think you've fallen to this other side where you've just said, hey, there's no more Holy Spirit. I think you probably are landing on that one more than anything. I think if you don't see the fruit of the Spirit in your lives, then it's most likely that you have been living as if the Spirit of God cannot have any power in your life. Or perhaps that time for that has expired, that God only did that for a certain time. So my prayer for you would be that you would listen to the Spirit of God, that the ministry of truth that we need in our lives and in this land is not one that a government creates or a website makes or some news source believes that they have the authority over, but that you would allow the Spirit of God to minister to you to show you the truth, the truth of you need Christ in your life, the truth that you need to leave sin behind, and that he would show you the areas in your life where sin exists.

The Scriptures tell us that if we believe that we are without sin, we're made out to be a liar and the truth does not live in us. My prayer for you would be that you would open the word of God, that you would open the Scriptures and say, lord, where is it that sin has been reigning in me? Where is it that sin has been having its way in my life? Convict me of sin, Lord, and fill me with your Holy Spirit. Amen.

I want to say a quick prayer over you before we have a Next steps video and a benediction. And I want to pray that you would receive that and that you would receive more of the Holy Spirit in your life. God, I just thank you today for the chance to preach the Word, the chance to open up the Scriptures and hopefully open up our minds and our hearts to what you have for us and God. I pray for my friends here today.

There would be a conviction on our hearts that we would desire more of you. And, Lord, if there's anyone who doesn't know you, who hasn't given their heart and their life over to you, that today, Lord, would be the day of salvation for them. Today would be the day that they would receive you as their Savior and begin to live a new life in you. O Holy Spirit, fill us today. Speak to us, minister to us, lead us and guide us.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen.