Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 358
“That Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance.” Ephesians 1:13,14. SO then, Heaven, with all its glories, is an inheritance! Now, an inheritance is not a thing which is bought with money, earned by labor, or won by conquest; if any man has an inheritance, in the proper sense of that term, it came to him by birth; it was not because of any special merit in him, but simply because he was his father’s son, that he received the property of which he is now possessed. So is it with Heaven. The man who shall receive this glorious heritage will not obtain it by the works of the Law, nor by the efforts of the flesh; it will be given to him as a matter of most gracious right, because he has been “begotten again unto a lively hope, by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” and has thus become an heir of Heaven by blood and birth. They who come unto Glory are sons. Is it not written, “The captain of our salvation brings many sons unto Glory”? They come not there as servants; no servant has any right to the inheritance of his master; let him be ever so faithful, yet he is not his master’s heir. But because you are sons—sons by God’s adoption, sons by the Spirit’s regeneration—because by supernatural energy you have been born-again—you become inheritors of eternal life, and you enter into the many mansions of our Father’s house above! Let us always understand, then, when we think of Heaven, that it is a place which is to be ours, and a state which we are to enjoy as the result of birth—not as the result of work. “Except a man is born-again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God;” that Kingdom being an inheritance, but until he has the new birth, he can have no claim to enter it. But is it possible for us, provided that Heaven is our inheritance, and we are God’s children—is it possible for us to know anything whatever of that land beyond the flood? Is there power in human intellect to fly into the land of the hereafter, and reach those islands of the happy where God’s people rest eternally in the bosom of their God? We are met at the outset with a rebuff which staggers us—“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them who love Him.”
If we paused here, we might give up all idea of beholding from our houses of clay that goodly land and Lebanon; but we do not pause, for like the Apostle, we go on with the text and we add, “But He has revealed it unto us by His Spirit.” It is possible to look within the veil! God’s Spirit can turn it aside for a moment, and bid us take a glimpse—though it is but a distant one—at that unutterable Glory! There are Pisgahs even now on the surface of the earth, from the top of which the celestial Canaan can be beheld; there are hallowed hours in which the mists and clouds are swept away, and the sun shines in its strength and our eyes, being freed from their natural dimness, behold something of that land which is very far off, and glimpse a little of the joy and blessedness which is reserved for the people of God hereafter! Our text tells us that the Holy Spirit is the earnestof the inheritance, by which I understand that He is not only the pledge, for a pledge is given for security, but when the thing pledged is given, then the pledge itself is restored—but He is an earnest, which is a pledge and something more. An earnest is a part of the thing itself—it is not only a pledge of the thing for security— but it is a foretaste of it for present enjoyment. The word in the Greek has a stronger force than our word, “pledge.” Again I repeat it—if I promise to pay a man something, I may give him land or property in pledge; but if I pay him a part of the sum which I have promised, that is more than a pledge—it is an earnest, because it is a part of the thing itself.
So the Holy Spirit is a pledge to God’s people. Inasmuch as God has given them the Graces of the Spirit, He will give them the Glory that results from there. But He is more—He is a foretaste—He is a sweet ante past of Heaven, so that they who possess the Spirit of God, possess the first tastes of Heaven; they have reaped the first fruits of the eternal harvest! The first drops of a shower of glory have fallen upon them; they have beheld the first beams of the rising sun of eternal bliss; they have not merely a pledge for security—they have an earnest—which is security and foretaste combined!
Understand, then, for this is what I am about to speak of this morning; by the Holy Spirit there is given to the people of God even now, experiences, joys and feelings which prove that they shall be in Heaven—which do more, which bring Heaven down to them, and make them already able to guess in some measure what Heaven must be When I have enlarged upon that theme, I shall take the black side of the picture, and remark that it is possible for men on earth to have both a pledge and an earnest of those eternal pains which are reserved for the impenitent—a dark subject—but may God grant it may be for our profit and awakening.
I. First, then, THERE ARE SOME WORKS OF THE SPIRIT WHICH ARE PECULIARLY AN EARNEST TO