New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 315
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, May 13th, 1860, Exeter Hall, Strand.
“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. We delight to hear of that “unspeakable gift”—the Son of God, who bare our sine, and carried our sorrows, and endured our punishment in his own body on the tree. There is something so tangible in the cross, the nails, the vinegar, the spear, that we are not able to forget the Master, especially when so often we enjoy the delightful privilege of assembling round his table, and breaking bread in remembrance of him. 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.”
My work this morning is to set forth the work of the Holy Spirit, not as a Comforter, or as a Quickener, or as a Sanctifier, but principally as a Teacher, although we shall have to touch upon these other points in passing.
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 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.
Concerning this Teacher, these three things—first, what he teaches; secondly, his methods of teaching; and thirdly, the nature and characteristics of that teaching.
I. First, then, WHAT THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES US. 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.
1. I say that he teaches them all that they do. Now, 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 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, Abbe, 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, 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. 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.