The Importance Of Christ’s Holy Spirit In Our Lives (John 16)
A Sermon By Elise Beatrice - Saturday, 17 May 2025

Lord, You are the One who guides us. 
Lord, we love You, and we bless You, and we thank You.
May Your name be glorified all over the earth. And may Your Father’s name be praised all over the earth, my Lord, for when You are praised indeed, Your Father is also praised. Thank You, Lord Jesus, thank You, for the Glory is Yours and Your Father, and You will share that glory with us. So thank You, Lord, for Your love. Please deliver us from any intrusion and allow me, my Lord, to do this sermon as You will give me. 
Thank You, my Lord, Amen. 

John 16:5-15,
5 “But now I am going away to the one who sent Me, and not one of you is asking where I am going. 6 Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you. 7 But in fact, it is best for you that I go away because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send Him to you. 8 And when He comes, He will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment. 9 The world’s sin is that it refuses to believe in Me. 10 Righteousness is available because I go to the Father, and you will see Me no more. 11 Judgment will come because the ruler of this world has already been judged. 
12 “There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own but will tell you what He has heard. He will tell you about the future. 14 He will bring Me glory by telling you whatever He receives from Me. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine; this is why I said, ‘The Spirit will tell you whatever He receives from Me.’” Amen! 

So, our Lord Jesus is the One to whom glory is given when even the Holy Spirit reveals something to us because the Holy Spirit also glorifies the Lord Jesus by respecting everything He hears from Him. So, the Lord Jesus is the One telling the Holy Spirit what to tell us and giving the Holy Spirit what to give us. And that is amazing. 
So, this is teaching us the importance of having the Holy Spirit in our lives. 
Though the Lord was with the disciples, they did not yet have the Holy Spirit, but they had the Lord Himself, who is Spirit, before them, who taught them everything. 
When you are with the Master, you don’t need any other help from anybody. So they had the Master right before their eyes, and they listened to Him, except for one. 

So, suppose the Lord Jesus had not returned to heaven to sit at His Father’s Right Hand; His disciples really would not need the Holy Spirit because He was with them. So, suppose the Lord Jesus was with us physically today; we would not need His Holy Spirit. So, it was good for us that He returned to His Father so that we can then have Christ in us through His Holy Spirit. And that shows the importance of having God’s Holy Spirit and listening to the Holy Spirit. 

What is the great advantage of having the Lord Jesus Holy Spirit in us? 
He convicts the world of its sin, reveals the truth all the time, and warns us about God’s judgement. 
Today, most leaders are not teaching right. They don’t have the Lord’s Holy Spirit in them. Since Christ is the only Saviour, saving people from the darkness, if people don’t believe in that Son of God, who is the Judge, who has authority over the heavens and the earth, they’re stuck in the darkness. If you don’t believe in that One who saves you from the fire, how can you be saved from the fire? If you don’t believe in that One who saves you from the darkness, how can you be saved from the darkness? 
The presence of God’s Holy Spirit in us convicts us of all sins. In fact, when the Holy Spirit came to live with me, for in 2012, I went to the Lord and pleaded, “Please take my life and do whatever You want with it,” and I began to pray every day and strive to listen to Him, and it wasn’t long before I began to hate sin as never before. I always hated evil, but I was hating sin at another level at this time and I was becoming more and more sensitive to sin, and what I used to tolerate before was no longer something I could tolerate. You can’t help this; you just become sensitive to sin; you can’t stand it; you can’t stand sin. You just want to express the Love of God and tell everyone how great He is. And at the same time, you want people to realise that they may be living in sin. There is no tiny sin in the eyes of God. So you become sensitive to sin and can’t stand it, no matter its size. And that is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

So, many claim to have God’s Holy Spirit, but you see, in their churches, they are tolerating sin. They don’t rebuke their congregation when they’re sinning; they promote sin, but they never tell them that those sins are the reasons why they might never see Heaven. Yes, the Holy Spirit comes to convict us of those sins, so we must be pleased when He convicts us of sin. 
If our lives were righteous, we would not be convicted of any sin, right? If our lives were pleasing to the Lord, and we were walking before the Lord and were blameless in His eyes, we would not be continuously convicted of sin.

God uses people to help others realise their faults, the same way He uses His words. When many read God’s words, they are continuously convicted. But this conviction is a good thing so that we can turn from those sins and repent and do what is pleasing to the Lord for Him to take those sins away. 

I see people nowadays, including some believers, obstructing the devoted servants of the Lord who are truly teaching the ways of the Lord. They are not accepting the correction of God; they are not accepting the correction of the Holy Spirit. Don’t let Satan use you to obstruct the beautiful Gospel of Salvation that is there for the sake of humanity. The Holy Spirit is not with us so we can drag Him into sinful environments, and while having our parties and associating with idolaters, He is just there hanging around and waiting for us. The Holy Spirit of God cannot stand sin. He is grieved by sins. Many live in sin and have no intention to repent, and we can see their sinful behaviour in the way they distort the words of the Lord, refuse to listen to the Lord, compromise His teachings, allow demons to fill up their churches, leading many astray, and more, yet they claim that they have God’s Holy Spirit. What kind of Holy Spirit if then you are still sinning? There is only One Holy Spirit, and He is from God. And that Holy Spirit hates sin just like Father God does, like the Lord Jesus hates sin; It is The Spirit of Christ, The Spirit of God, the Father. He cannot do what God, the Father, doesn’t do. He cannot embrace sins; He cannot tolerate sin. He loves us and must convict us of sin since He does what the Lord Jesus tells Him to do. He must reveal the truth to us and warn us of the Lord’s Judgment. So whenever someone obstructs a servant of the Lord who remains faithful to His teaching, they obstruct the Lord Jesus and His Holy Spirit.

“So when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.”

So, when you indeed have the Holy Spirit in you, He guides you into all truth. So you will not believe the false teachings. You will not hang out with false teachers and listen to worldly teachings because they clash with the truththat Christ speaks about, with the Truth that Christ Is. You will not be driven by what the false prophets tell you. You will not be hanging around with people who tell you what your itchy ears want to hear. Because that Holy Spirit from within you will be convicting you of all those sinful people and environments, and you’ll be utterly grieved just as He is grieved by such places and sins. Sins are impure; they are wickedness; they are the devil’s deeds that come in many shapes and sizes. And the Holy Spirit is convicting you of all those sins and guiding you into all truth. So, if you believe you have the Holy Spirit in you, why are you still hanging around with false teachers and those who tell you what your itchy ears want to hear? Why are you still hearing those people more than those who remain truthful to the teachings of Christ? 
That is your proof that what you think is the Holy Spirit in you is not really the Holy Spirit. Everything that opposes God is not from God. 
To see if you truly have the Holy Spirit, use the Scriptures to examine your own behaviour, for the Holy Spirit in you will not tolerate sin. And if you, yourself, are tolerating sins, it is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will not associate with those who practice evil and don’t even want to turn away from it. And if you are finding no problem to associate with people like these, then it is not the Holy Spirit you have in you. The Holy Spirit is not going to be with you while you hang around in sinful places when He is grieved continuously. 
Think of the story of King Saul in the Holy Bible. When he began his rebellion against God and would not listen to God, the Spirit of God departed from Him. Once the Holy Spirit of God departed from him, and since he did not have God’s protection, the evil spirits rapidly entered him. Of course, he began the rebellion when the Holy Spirit was still in him, but God would not stay in a sinful environment for a long time. First, He would give you the warning to repent of your sins, and if you don’t listen, God will depart from you. 

So, many claim they have God’s Holy Spirit, yet they are still lukewarm Christians. If you have God’s Holy Spirit, why is the Lord Jesus saying to you,
“...Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16)?
Does the Lord Jesus spit His children out of His mouth?
Everything the Lord will spit out of His mouth will be something that doesn’t belong, something that is disgusting.
It is the Holy Spirit bringing the truth and helping people be aware of God’s judgment so they can take precautions. He is the Spirit of Christ, who is there to glorify our Lord Jesus and do what He tells Him to do. 

So, Christ was telling His disciples, ‘It is good that I go, for if I do not go, you will not have my Spirit with you.’Indeed, He went, and the Spirit of God came upon them at the Pentecost. The Holy Spirit of God came to remind them of that truth Christ taught them. If we don’t have God’s Holy Spirit, who continuously reminds us of the truth as spoken by the Lord Jesus and Father God, the evil spirits cause us to forget that truth so rapidly. The more we are fascinated by the world, the more we depart from the truth, for the world’s sin is that they don’t believe in the Lord Jesus. 

So, we should depart from every single thing that is a danger to our faith. It is written that bad company corrupts good moral. It is always the case. It is a fact that if we depart from what the Lord Jesus taught us, those truths will rapidly be replaced by the lies that come from nowhere but the father of lies, who is satan. So when you have a body free from evil spirits, nothing is preventing you from the truth. For that truth you embrace, that truth you relate to, that truth you want. You become hungry for the ways of the Lord, you become thirsty to please God, and you want to live for God because the Holy Spirit is there. The Lord Jesus has transformed you, and you have become a new creation. I’m not talking about those who claim to be a new creation, yet they’re still living in sin and doing their own will. And most things in their lives are the devil’s counterfeits. 

We see at the Pentecost when the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit. Everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Truth, had taken over, and that truth was evident to everyone who was there. 
In fact, we read, 
“1 On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And there appeared to them dividing tongues as of fire and sat upon each one of them. 4 And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability” (Acts 2:1-4).
So, the Holy Spirit is very important in our lives, and we cannot have Him unless we love the Lord Jesus Christ by obeying His commands, for He said,   
“15 If you love Me, obey my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. 17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it isn’t looking for Him and doesn’t recognize Him. But you know Him, because He lives with you now and later will be in you. 18 No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you” (John 14:15-18).
And if we’re living for our Lord and obeying Him, His Holy Spirit produces these kinds of fruits in our lives:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22).

I pray with my heart that this sermon will help you and that it will be the beginning of you doing things differently if you have not already been doing so. There is always a beginning to do things right. 
So, Lord, thank You so much for Your grace, and Your mercy and Your love and Your peace, Your teachings, Your Holy Spirit. I thank You, God, for Your presence in our lives. 
You are the blessing for everybody, even those who do not believe in You, You are still that blessing that if they want You, they can have You. And I am praying that many will see that and have You while they still can, Lord, for You have made Yourself available to whoever wants You. 
Thank You so much, Lord, for what You did for us on the Cross. You did not come just for Your people; You came for everyone. 
I pray that people will see that You are the solution to their problems, and You are that salvation for their souls, that You are the Life that they need, the Eternal Life. I pray they will see that, Lord. I hope that for them; I pray that for them. So, Thank You, Lord Jesus, for loving us and for loving them also. 
Once they come to You, they will realise You never stopped loving them, and it was indeed their sins that kept You away from them. 
I pray they will repent of those sins so they can then begin to see the kind of love You have for them, and they will love that. They will love that love, and nothing will compare to it, Lord. Nothing compares to Your Love and Your peace. 
So thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your deliverance from evil. 
In Your Holy Name, Lord, I pray. Amen.