Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2907
“He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” John 16:14.
THE needs of spiritual men are very great, but they cannot be greater than the power of the Divine Trinity is able to meet. We have one God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—One in Three and Three in One. And that blessed Trinity in Unity gives Himself to sinners that they may be saved. In the first place, every good thing that a sinner needs is in the Father. The prodigal son was wise when he said, “I will arise and go to my father.” Every good and perfect gift comes from God the Father, the first Person in the blessed Trinity, because every good gift and every perfect gift can only be found in Him. But the needy soul says, “How shall I get to the Father? He is infinitely above me. How shall I reach up to Him?” In order that you might obtain the blessings of Grace, God was in Christ Jesus, the second ever-blessed Person of the Sacred Trinity. Let me read you part of the verse that follows my text—“All things that the Father has are Mine.” So you see, everything is in the Father, first, and the Father puts all things into Christ. “It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell.” Now you can get to Christ because He is Man as well as God. He is “over all, God blessed forever,” but He came into this world, was born of the Virgin Mary, lived a life of poverty, “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.” He is the conduit conveying to us all blessings from the Father. In the Gospel of John we read, “Of His fullness have we all received and grace for grace.” Thus you see the Father with every good thing in Himself putting all fullness into the Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus who is also the Son of God.
Now I hear a poor soul say, “But I cannot get to Christ. I am blind and lame. If I could get to Him, He would open my eyes, but I am so lame that I cannot run or even walk to Him. If I could get to Him, He would give me strength, but I lie as one dead. I cannot see Christ or tell where to find Him.” Here comes in the work of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the blessed Unity! It is His office to take of the things of Christ and show them unto saints and sinners, too. We cannot see them, but we shall see them quickly enough when He shows them to us! Our sin puts a veil between us and Christ. The Holy Spirit comes and takes the veil away from our heart and then we see Christ. It is the Holy Spirit’s office to come between us and Christ, to lead us to Christ, even as the Son of God comes between us and the Father, to lead us to the Father so that we have the whole Trinity uniting to save a sinner—the Triune God bowing down out of Heaven for the salvation of rebellious men! Every time we dismiss you from this House of Prayer, we pronounce upon you the blessing of the Sacred Trinity—“May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you!” And you need all that to make a sinner into a saint and to keep a saint from going back to being a sinner again! The whole blessed Godhead—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—must work upon every soul that is to be saved!
See how Divinely they work together—how the Father glorifies the Son, how the Holy Spirit glorifies Jesus, how both the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus glorify the Father! These Three are One, sweetly uniting in the salvation of the chosen seed.
Tonight our work is to speak of the Holy Spirit. Oh, what a blessed Person He is! He is not merely a sacred influence, but a Divine Person—“very God of very God.” He is the Spirit of holiness to be reverenced, to be spoken of with delight, yet with trembling, for, remember, there is a sin against the Holy Spirit. A word spoken against the Son of Man
may be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (whatever that may be, I know not) is put down as a sin beyond the line of Divine Forgiveness! Therefore reverence, honor and worship God the Holy Spirit, in whom lies the only hope that any of us can ever have of seeing Jesus and so of seeing God the Father!
First, tonight, I shall try to speak of what the Holy Spirit does. “He will receive of Mine and show it to you” Secondly I shall seek to set forth what the Holy Spirit aims at “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” And, thirdly, I shall explain how in both these things He acts as the Comforter, for we read in the seventh verse, our Savior say, “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you,” and it is of the Comforter that He says, “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.”
I. First we are to consider WHAT THE HOLY SPIRIT DOES. Jesus says, “He will receive of Mine and show it to you.”
The Holy Spirit, then, deals with the things of Christ. How I wish that all Christ’s ministers would imitate the Holy Spirit in this respect! When you are dealing with the things of Christ, you are on Holy Spirit ground—you are following the track of the Holy Spirit. Does the Holy Spirit deal with science? What is science? Another name for the ignorance of men. Does the Holy Spirit deal with politics? What are politics? Another name for every man getting as much as he can out of the nation. Does the Holy Spirit deal with these things? No, my Brothers, “He will receive of Mine.” O my Brother, the Holy Spirit will leave you if you go gadding about after these insignificant trifles! He will leave you if you aim at magnifying yourself, your wisdom and your plans, for the Holy Spirit is taken up with the things of Christ! “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” I like what Mr. Wesley said to his preachers. “Leave other things alone,” he said, “you are called to win souls.” So I believe it is with all true preachers. We may leave other things alone. The Holy Spirit, who is our Teacher, will acknowledge and bless us if we keep to His line of things. O preacher of the Gospel, what can you receive like the things of Christ? And what can you talk of so precious to the souls of men as the things of Christ? Therefore follow the Holy Spirit in dealing with the things of Christ.