The Holy Spirit

We Must be Taught God

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

…He shall teach you all things… – John 14:26

God is to be heard in every wind, and seen in every cloud, but not all of God. God’s goodness, and God’s omnipotence, the world clearly manifesteth to us in the works of creation, but where do I read of His grace, where do I read of His mercy, or of His justice? There are lines which I cannot read in creation. Those must have ears indeed who can hear the notes of mercy or of grace whispering in the evening gale. No, brethren, these parts of God’s attributes are only revealed to us in this precious Book, and there they are so revealed that we cannot know them until the Spirit opens our eyes to perceive them. To know the inflexibility of Divine justice, and to see how God exacts punishment for every jot and tittle of sin, and yet to know that that full-justice does not eclipse His equally full-mercy, but that the two move around each other, without for a single instant coming into contact, or conflict, or casting the slighest shallow one or the other; to see how God is just and yet the justifier of the ungodly, and so to know God that my spirit loves His nature, appreciates His attributes, and desires to be like Him-this is a knowledge which astronomy cannot teach, which all the researches of the sciences can never give to us. We must be taught God, if we ever learn of Him-we must be taught God, by God the Holy Ghost. Oh that we may learn this lesson well, that we may be able to sing of His faithfulness, of His covenant love, of His immutability, of His boundless mercy, of His inflexible justice, that we may be able to talk to one another concerning that incomprehensible One, and may see Him even as a man seeth his friend; and may come to walk with Him as Enoch did all the days of our life. This, indeed, must be an education given to us by the Holy Ghost. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

He Convicts the Lost Man

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit, the unbelieving life 2 Comments

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. – John 16:8

The Spirit teaches us the total ruin, depravity, and helplessness of self. Men pretend to know this by nature, but they do not know it; they can only speak the words of experience as parrots speak like men. But to know myself utterly lost and ruined; to know myself so lost, “that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing,” is a knowledge so distasteful, so hateful, so abominable to the carnal intellect, that man would not learn it if he could, and if he hath learnt it, it is a clear proof that God the Holy Spirit has made him willing to see the truth, and willing to receive it. When we sometimes hear great preachers telling us that there is something grand left in man yet, that when Adam fell he might have broken his little finger, but did not ruin himself entirely, that man is a grand being, in fact a noble creature and that we are all wrong in telling men they are depraved, and thundering out the law of God at them-am I astonished that they should speak thus? Nay, my brethren, it is the language of the carnal mind the whole world over, and in every age. No wonder that a man is eloquent upon this point, every man needs to be eloquent when he has to defend a lie. No wonder that glorious sentences have been uttered, and flowery periods poured forth from a cornucopia of eloquence upon this subject. A man need exhaust all logic and all rhetoric to defend a-falsehood; and it is not a wonder that he seeks to do it, for man believes himself to be rich, and increased in goods, and to have need of nothing, till the Holy Ghost teaches him that he is naked, and poor, and miserable.

Your destiny hangs there now; and will you rebel against the God in whose hand your soul’s eternal fate now rests? Will you lift the puny hand of your rebellion against him who alone can quicken you-without whose gracious energy you are dead, and must be destroyed? Will you go this day and sin against light and against knowledge? …Obey the divine command, believe on Christ and live! Hear thou the voice of Jehovah, who cries, “This is the commandment, that ye believe in Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Thou Hast Worked in Us

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 4 Comments

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” – Ephesians 2:10

“It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” We may take the best heed to our life, but we shall stumble or go astray unless He who first set us in the path shall guide us in it. “I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms.” “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.” To stray is natural; to keep to the path of right is spiritual. To err is human; to be holy is divine. To fall is the natural effect of evil; but to stand is the glorious effect of the Holy Spirit working in us, both to will and to do of His own good pleasure. There was never yet a heavenly thought, never yet a hallowed deed, never yet a consecrated act acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, which was not worked in us by the Holy Ghost. Thou hast worked all our works in us. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Thou hast worked in us, and unto Thee would we give well-deserved thanks. So, then, all the doings of the Christian, both the little and the major doings, are all the teachings of the Holy Ghost. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

The Sayings of the Saints are the Teachings of the Spirit

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit 2 Comments

…He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance… – John 14:26

There are some things which you and I can do naturally, when we are but children without any teaching. Who ever taught a child to cry? It is natural to do it. The first sign of its life is its shrill feeble cry of pain. Ever afterwards you need never send it to school to teach it to utter the cry of its grief, the well known expression of its little sorrows. Ah, my brethren, but you and I as spiritual infants, had to be taught to cry; for we could not even cry of ourselves, till we had received “the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” There are cryings and groanings which cannot be uttered in words and speech, simple as this language of the new nature seems to be. But even these feeblest groanings, sighings, cryings, and tears, are marks of education. We must be taught to do this, or else we are not sufficient to do even these little things in and of ourselves. Children, as we know, have to be taught to speak, and it is by degrees that they-are able to pronounce first the shorter, and afterwards the longer words. We, too, are taught to speak. We have none of us learned, as yet, the whole vocabulary of Canaan. I trust we are able to say some of the words; but we shall never be able to pronounce them all till we come into that land where we shall see Christ, and “shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” The sayings of the saints, when they are good and true, are the teachings of the Spirit. Marked ye not that passage-“No man can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost?” He may say as much in dead words, but the spirit’s saying, the saying of the soul, he can never attain to, except as he is taught by the Holy Ghost. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

The Great Teacher of the Father’s Children

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

…He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance… – John 14:26

The Holy Ghost is the great Teacher of the Father’s children. The Father begets us by His own will through the word of truth. Jesus Christ takes us into union with Himself, so that we become in a second sense the children of God. Then God the Holy Spirit breathes into us the “spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” Having given us that spirit of adoption, He trains us, becomes our great Educator, cleanses away our ignorance, and reveals one truth after another, until at last we comprehend with all the saints what are the heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths, and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and then the Spirit introduces the educated ones to the general assembly and church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven. And here indeed we have a wide field spread before us, for He teaches to God’s people all that they do that is acceptable to the Father, and all that they know that is profitable to themselves.

Those first words which we ever used as Christians-“God be merciful to me a sinner,” were taught us by the Holy Spirit; and that song which we shall sing before the throne-“Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever,” shall but be the ripe fruit of that same tree of knowledge of good and evil, which the Holy Spirit hath planted in the soil of our hearts. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

The Gift of the Holy Spirit to Us

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, Whatsoever I have said unto you.”-John 14:26.

There are many choice gifts comprehended in the Covenant of Grace, but the first and richest of them are these twain-the gift of Jesus Christ for us and the gift of the Holy Ghost to us. The first of these I trust we are not likely to undervalue…But the second great gift, by no means inferior to the first-the gift of the Holy Spirit to us-is so spiritual and we are so carnal, is so mysterious and we are so material, that we are very apt to forget its value, ay, and even to forget the gift altogether. And yet, my brethren, let us ever remember that Christ on the cross is of no value to us apart from the Holy Spirit in us. In vain that blood is flowing, unless the finger of the Spirit applies the blood to our conscience; in vain is that garment of righteousness wrought out, a garment without seam, woven from the top throughout, unless the Holy Spirit wraps it around us, and arrays us in its costly folds. The river of the water of life cannot quench our thirst till the Spirit presents the goblet and lifts it to our lip. All the things that are in the paradise of God itself could never be blissful to us so long as we are dead souls, and dead souls we are until that heavenly wind comes from the four corners of the earth and breathes upon us slain, that we may live. We do not hesitate to say, that we owe as much to God the Holy Ghost as we do to God the Son. Indeed, it were a high sin and misdemeanor to attempt to put one person of the Divine Trinity before another. Thou, O Father, art the source of all grace, all love and mercy towards us. Thou, O Son, art the channel of Thy Father’s mercy, and without Thee Thy Father’s love could never flow to us. And Thou, O Spirit-Thou art He who enables us to receive that divine virtue which flows from the fountainhead, the Father, through Christ the channel, and by Thy means enters into our spirit, and there abides and brings forth its glorious fruit. Magnify, then, the Spirit, ye who are partakers of it; praise, laud, and love His name always, for it is seemly so to do. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

Ye Shall Be Witnesses Unto Me

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Holy Spirit 5 Comments

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me. – Acts 1:8

“Holy Spirit, dwell in me;
I, myself, would holy be.”

There are many who would have been in the asylum, in their time of trial, if it had not been that they could carry their grief to Christ. There are some of us who are not strangers to very acute pain, and to a long continuance of it, too; and we have found no comfort in the world like going to our Lord when racked with anguish, and torn with pain. There is a power about Him to charm us into joy; when everything would drive us to distress, and almost to despair.

I have been at many death-beds; I have seen many Christians just about to die. There it is that the power of our holy religion comes in. How calm, how resigned, sometimes how triumphant, how ecstatic, is the frame of mind of the departing believer! I never heard one of them regret that he was a Christian. In times when men sift what they have done and believed, and when they tell no lies, for the naked truth comes up before them, I have heard them glory in belonging to Christ, and in resting in Him; but I have never heard them regret that they did so. Our religion is not all of the future; it is not a thing that dreams concerning the world to come. It gives us present joy, present strength, present comfort, and we commend it to you most heartily, for this is our duty, to be witnesses for Christ.

May the Spirit of God rest upon you, beloved in the Lord, and may you hear your Master say to you, Ye shall be witnesses unto Me”! Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2330.cfm