Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3127
“He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive ofMine, and shall show it unto you.” John 16:14.
[Other Sermons by Mr. Spurgeon, upon this passage, are as follows— Sermons #565, Volume 8—THE HOLY SPIRIT GLORIFYING CHRIST; #2212, Volume 37—“HONEY IN THE MOUTH!” and #3062, Volume 53—THE SPIRIT’S OFFICE TOWARDS DISCIPLES]
JESUS CHRIST, our gracious Lord and Master, is here speaking of the Holy Spirit and He says of Him, “He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you.” Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His own personal teaching, did not plainly declare all the Truths which He intended to reveal because the Holy Spirit was not then given to His disciples and they were not, at that time, able to receive all that He might have taught them. He Himself said to them, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now.” The germ of everything that would be revealed was in the teaching of Christ, but not the full development of it. That was left till after the Holy Spirit had been given on the day of Pentecost. In the Acts of the Apostles, in their various Epistles and in the Apocalypse given to John, we have the full Revelation of the Truth of God—the Holy Spirit there taking of the things of Christ and revealing them to us and also, according to His promise, showing us, in the Book of the Revelation, “things to come.”
Note that our Savior did not go away from His disciples and leave the Spirit to come upon them without previously intimating to them the fact that He was coming. He prepared them for the change. While He was here upon earth, He was personally at the head of His people and as it was His purpose that the Holy Spirit should act as His Substitute during His absence, He informed His followers that it would be so. He told them that the Spirit of God would come, that He would more fully reveal the great Truths which He had Himself taught to His disciples and that He would apply the Truths already revealed to the hearts of His people so that they would be able to understand much that had, up to now, been beyond their comprehension. There was no separation of the dispensation of Christ from that of the Holy Spirit, but they were dovetailed and pieced into one another by these memorable words of the Lord Jesus just before He went to Gethsemane and Calvary—“He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you.”
In considering this declaration of our Savior with regard to the Holy Spirit, we shall view it in three aspects, praying that God will make it a blessing while we are meditating upon it. We shall, first, view the text doctrinally. Secondly, considerit as apromise. And, thirdly, look upon it as aprecedent ormodel by which we should work.
I. First, then, WE WILL VIEW THE TEXT DOCTRINALLY.
This declaration of Christ contains some most important Doctrines and the best is this—that it is the office and aim of the Holy Spirit to glorify Jesus Christ No study in Scripture is more interesting or profitable to the Christian than the Revelation which is given to us concerning the Sacred Trinity and the various parts which the Divine Persons take in the work of our salvation. John Bunyan wrote a notable work upon the Trinity and the Christian—and nothing could be more appropriate, for there would be no Christian without the Trinity! It needs the Father, the Son and the Spirit to produce that noblest kind of man, a Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ! The various offices of the blessed Trinity in Unity are usually distinct and clearly defined, yet they sometimes intertwist and interchange, just as Jesus in our text bears witness to the Spirit and the Spirit continually bears witness to the Lord Jesus and glorifies Him. Brothers and Sisters, I pray you will remember that when the Spirit convicts the world of sin, it is in order that the convicted sinner may learn the preciousness of that Savior to whom the Spirit bears witness! When He convicts the world ofjudgment, it is not only
that the Judge may be honored as He deserves to be, but also that the way by which judgment may be averted through the substitutionary Sacrifice of Christ may be made clear to the sinner’s mind. And when He convicts the world of righteousness, what righteousness is it but that which Jesus Christ has worked out and brought in—that righteousness alone in which saved sinners are able to appear before God without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing? The Holy Spirit always works with this aim and objective—to lead sinners to admire, adore and trust in Jesus Christ! His Omnipotence bends itself to this end—that Jesus Christ may be glorified in the hearts and lives of sinners saved by His Grace!
I gather from our text another Doctrine, namely, that, any teaching which does not glorify Jesus Christ is not the teaching of the Holy Spirit. By this simple test, the humblest among us may be able to judge even that form of teaching which is most pretentious. And if it cannot endure this test, it may be rejected without hesitation! The poorest man who enters any assembly, if he hears a Doctrine that glorifies Christ, can say, “I may safely listen to this teaching, for the Spirit of God will set His seal to it.” But if, on the other hand, amidst a blaze of intellectual splendor and a brilliant display of mere human knowledge, nothing is said that will glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, the true child of God says to himself, “What business have I to be in this place? This is not the company that is congenial to me, nor the teaching to which I ought to give heed. Here is neither the food for my soul nor yet the opportunity of glorifying my dear Lord and Master! I will leave this assembly and seek to find some other place where the Spirit of God is at work in His chosen ministry of glorifying Christ.” Thus the great Doctrine that it is the Spirit’s work to glorify Christ furnishes us with a spiritual detector by which we may discover what is true gold and what is counterfeit—and by which we may judge whether the voices that we hear are voices of the night which cry out to us to follow them in the darkness, or the voices of the dawning which herald the coming of the day!