“The Personality Of The Holy Ghost” | Charles Spurgeon Sermon (Historic Homilies)

The following is a transcript of Charles Spurgeon’s sermon titled “The Personality Of The Holy Ghost.” You can listen to my reading of this sermon at Historic Homilies on YouTube, which will be embedded below. This version of the sermon text contains whatever changes I made while recording, which I typically do just to make some words or phrases more clearly understandable for a modern audience. In these cases, the original word or phrase will be indicated with [brackets]. But certain minor changes (thy to your, or hath to has) will not be indicated. Sometimes I add a word, or leave a word out, simply by accident as I’m reading. These errors are typically minor and will also not be indicated.

“The Personality of the Holy Ghost”

by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

January 21, 1855

“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” – John 14:16–17

You will be surprised to hear me announce that I do not intend this morning to say anything about the Holy Spirit as the Comforter. I propose to reserve that for a special Sermon this evening. In this discourse I shall endeavor to explain and enforce certain other doctrines, which I believe are plainly taught in this text, and which I hope God the Holy Ghost may make profitable to our souls. Old John Newton once said, that there were some books which he could not read;—they were good and sound enough; but, said he, “they are books of halfpence;—you have to take so much in quantity before you have any value; there are other books of silver, and others of gold; but I have one book that is a book of bank notes; and every leaf is a bank-note of immense value.” So I found with this text: that I had a bank-note of so large a sum, that I could not tell it out all this morning. I should have to keep you several hours before I could unfold to you the whole value of this precious promise—one of the last which Christ gave to his people.

I invite your attention to this passage because we shall find in it some instruction on four points: first, concerning the true and proper personality of the Holy Ghost; secondly, concerning the united agency of the glorious Three Persons in the work of our salvation; thirdly we shall find something to establish the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the souls of all believers; and fourthly, we shall find out the reason why the carnal mind rejects the Holy Ghost.

I. First of all, we shall have some little instruction concerning the proper personality of the Holy Spirit. We are so much accustomed to talk about the influence of the Holy Ghost and his sacred operations and graces, that we are apt to forget that the Holy Spirit is truly and actually a person—that he is a subsistence—an existence; or, as we Trinitarians usually say, one person in the essence of the Godhead. I am afraid that, though we do not know it, we have acquired the habit of regarding the Holy Ghost as an emanation flowing from the Father and the Son, but not as being actually a person himself. I know it is not easy to carry about in our mind the idea of the Holy Spirit as a person. I can think of the Father as a person, because his acts are such as I can understand. I see him hang the world in ether; I behold him swaddling a new-born sea in bands of darkness; I know it is he who formed the drops of hail, who leadeth forth the stars by their hosts, and [called] them by their name; I can conceive of Him as a person, because I behold his operations. I can realize Jesus, the Son of Man, as a real person, because he is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. It takes no great stretch of my imagination to picture the babe in Bethlehem, or to behold the “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” of the king of martyrs, as he was persecuted in Pilate’s hall, or nailed to the accursed tree for our sins. Nor do I find it difficult at times to realize the person of my Jesus sitting on his throne in heaven; or clothed [girt] with clouds and wearing the diadem of all creation, calling the earth to judgment, and summoning us to hear our final sentence. But when I come to deal with the Holy Ghost, his operations are so mysterious, his doings are so secret, his acts are so removed from everything that is of sense, and of the body, that I cannot so easily get the idea of his being a person; but a person he is. God the Holy Ghost is not an influence, an emanation, a stream of something flowing from the Father; but he is as much an actual person as either God the Son, or God the Father. I shall attempt this morning a little to establish the doctrine, and to show you the truth of it—that God the Holy Spirit is actually a person.

The first proof we shall gather from the pool of holy baptism. Let me take you down, as I have taken others, into the pool, now concealed, but which I wish were always open to your view. Let me take you to the baptismal font, where believers put on the name of the Lord Jesus, and you shall hear me pronounce the solemn words, “I baptize thee in the name,”—mark, “in the name,” not names—”of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Every one who is baptized according to the true form laid down in Scripture, must be a Trinitarian: otherwise his baptism is a farce and a lie, and he himself is found a deceiver and a hypocrite before God. As the Father is mentioned, and as the Son is mentioned, so is the Holy Ghost; and the whole is summed up as being a Trinity in unity, by its being said, not the names, but the “name” the glorious name, the Jehovah name, “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Let me remind you that the same thing occurs each time you are dismissed from this house of prayer. In pronouncing the solemn closing benediction, we invoke on your behalf the love of Jesus Christ, the grace of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit; and thus, according to the apostolic manner, we make a manifest distinction between the persons, showing that we believe the Father to be a person, the Son to be a person, and the Holy Ghost to be a person. Were there no other proofs in Scripture, I think these would be sufficient for every sensible man. He would see that if the Holy Spirit were a mere influence, he would not be mentioned in conjunction with two whom we all confess to be actual and proper persons.

A second argument arises from the fact that the Holy Ghost has actually made different appearances on earth. The Great Spirit has manifested himself to man: he has put on a form, so that, whilst he has not been beheld by mortal men, he has been so veiled in appearance that he was seen, so far as that appearance was concerned, by the eyes of all beholders. See you Jesus Christ our Saviour? There is the river Jordan, with its shelving banks and its willows weeping at its side. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, descends into the stream, and the holy Baptist, John, plunges him into the waves. The doors of heaven are opened; a miraculous appearance presents itself; a bright light shineth from the sky, brighter than the sun in all its grandeur, and down in a flood of glory descends something which you recognize to be a dove. It rests on Jesus—it sits upon his sacred head, and as the old painters put a halo round the brow of Jesus, so did the Holy Ghost shed a resplendence around the face of him who came to fulfil all righteousness, and therefore commenced with the ordinances of baptism. The Holy Ghost was seen as a dove, to mark his purity and his gentleness, and he came down like a dove from heaven to show that it is from heaven alone that he descendeth. Nor is this the only time when the Holy Ghost has been manifest in a visible shape. You see that company of disciples gathered together in an upper room; they are waiting for some promised blessing, by-and-by, it shall come. Hark! there is a sound as of a rushing mighty wind; it fills all the house where they are sitting; and astonished, they look around them, wondering what will come next. Soon a bright light appears, shining upon the heads of each: cloven tongues of fire sat upon them. What were these marvelous appearances of wind and flame but a display of the Holy Ghost in his proper person? I say the fact of an appearance manifests that he must be a person. An influence could not appear—an attribute could not appear: we cannot see attributes—we cannot behold influences. The Holy Ghost must, then, have been a person; since he was beheld by mortal eyes, and came under the cognizance of mortal sense.

Another proof is from the fact, that personal qualities are, in Scripture, ascribed to the Holy Ghost. First, let me read to you a text in which the Holy Ghost is spoken of as having understanding. In the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 2, you will read, “But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepare for them that love him. But God have revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” Here you see an understanding—a power of knowledge is ascribed to the Holy Ghost. Now, if there be any persons here whose minds are of so preposterous a complexion that they would ascribe one attribute to another, and would speak of a mere influence having understanding, then I give up all the argument. But I believe every rational man will admit, that when anything is spoken of as having an understanding, it must be an existence—it must, in fact, be a person. In the 12th chapter, 11th verse, of the same Epistle, you will find a will ascribed to the Holy Spirit. “But all these worketh that one and the self-same spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.” So it is plain that the Spirit has a will. He does not come from God simply at God’s will, but he has a will of his own, which is always in keeping with the will of the infinite Jehovah, but is, nevertheless, distinct and separate; therefore, I say he is a person. In another text, power is ascribed to the Holy Ghost, and power is a thing which can only be ascribed to an existence. In Romans 15:13, it is written, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.” I need not insist upon it, because it is self-evident, that wherever you find understanding, will, and power, you must also find an existence; it cannot be a mere attribute, it cannot be a metaphor, it cannot be a personified influence; but it must be a person.

But I have a proof which, perhaps, will be more telling upon you than any other. Acts and deeds are ascribed to the Holy Ghost; therefore, he must be a person. You read in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, that the Spirit brooded over the surface of the earth, when it was as yet all disorder and confusion. This world was once a mass of chaotic matter, there was no order; it was like the valley of darkness and of the shadow of death. God the Holy Ghost spread his wings over it; he sowed the seeds of life in it; the germs from which all beings sprang were implanted by him; he impregnated the earth so that it became capable of life. Now, it must have been a person who brought order out of confusion: it must have been an existence who hovered over this world and made it what it now is. But do we not read in Scripture something more of the Holy Ghost? Yes, we are told that “holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” When Moses penned the Pentateuch, the Holy Ghost moved his hand; when David wrote the Psalms, and discoursed sweet music on his harp, it was the Holy Spirit that gave his fingers their Seraphic [angelic] motion; when Solomon dropped from his lips the words of the proverbs of wisdom, or when he hymned the Canticles of love, it was the Holy Ghost who gave him words of knowledge and hymns of rapture. Ah! and what fire was that which touched the lips of the eloquent Isaiah? What hand was that which came upon Daniel? What might was that which made Jeremiah so plaintive in his grief? or what was that which winged Ezekiel and made him like an eagle, soar into mysteries aloft, and see the mighty unknown beyond our reach? Who was it that made Amos, the herdsman, a prophet? Who taught the rough Haggai to pronounce his thundering sentences? Who showed Habakkuk the horses of Jehovah marching through the waters? or who kindled the burning eloquence of Nahum? Who caused Malachi to close up the book with the muttering of the word curse? Who was in each of these, save the Holy Ghost? And must it not have been a person who spake in and through these ancient witnesses? We must believe it. We cannot avoid believing it, when we read that “holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

And when has the Holy Ghost ceased to have an influence upon men? We find that still he deals with his ministers and with all his saints. Turn to the Acts, and you will find that the Holy Ghost said, “Separate me Paul and Barnabas for the work.” I never heard of an attribute saying such a thing. The Holy Spirit said to Peter, “Go to the Centurion, and what I have cleansed, that call not thou common.” The Holy Ghost caught away Philip after he had baptized the Eunuch, and carried him away to another place; and the Holy Ghost said to Paul; “Thou shalt not go into that city, but shall turn into another.” And we know that the Holy Ghost was lied unto by Ananias and Sapphira, when it was said, “Thou hast not lied unto man, but unto God.” Again, that power which we feel every day, who are called to preach—that wondrous spell which makes our lips so potent—that power which gives us thoughts which are like birds from a far-off region, not the natives of our soul—that influence which I sometimes strangely feel, which, if it does not give me poetry and eloquence, gives me a might I never felt before, and lifts me above my fellow-man—that majesty with which he clothes his ministers, till in the midst of the battle they cry aha! like the war-horse of Job, and move themselves like leviathans in the water—that power which gives us might over men, and causes them to sit and listen as if their ears were chained, as if they were entranced by the power of some magician’s wand—that power must come from a person; it must come from the Holy Ghost.

But is it not said in Scripture, and do we not feel it, dear brethren, that it is the Holy Ghost who regenerates the soul? It is the Holy Ghost who quickens us. “You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” It is the Holy Spirit who imparts the first germ of life, convincing us of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come. And is it not the Holy Spirit, who, after that flame is kindled, still fans it with the breath of his mouth and keeps it alive? Its author is its preserver. Oh! can it be said that it is the Holy Ghost who strives in men’s souls; that it is the Holy Ghost who brings them to the foot of Sinai, and then guides them into the sweet place that is called Calvary—can it be said that he does all these things, and yet is not a person? It may be said, but it must be said by fools; for he never can be a wise man who can consider these things can be done by any other than a glorious person—a divine existence.

Allow me to give you one more proof, and I shall have done. Certain feelings are ascribed to the Holy Ghost, which can only be understood upon the supposition that he is actually a person. In the 4th chapter of Ephesians, verse 30, it is said that the Holy Ghost can be grieved: “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.” In Isaiah, chapter 63, verse 10, it is said that the Holy Ghost can be vexed: “But they rebelled, and vexed his Holy Spirit; therefore he was turned to be their enemy, and he fought against them.” In Acts, chapter 7, verse 51, you read that the Holy Ghost can be resisted: “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye.” And in the 5th chapter, 9th verse, of the same book, you will find that the Holy Ghost may be tempted. We are there informed that Peter said to Ananias and Sapphira, “How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord?” Now, these things could not be emotions which might be ascribed to a quality or an emanation; they must be understood to relate to a person; an influence could not be grieved, it must be a person who can be grieved, vexed, or resisted.

And now, dear brethren, I think I have fully established the point of the personality of the Holy Ghost; allow me now, most earnestly, to impress upon you the absolute necessity of being sound on the doctrine of the Trinity. I knew a [good] man, a good minister of Jesus Christ he is now, and I believe he was before he turned aside unto heresy—he began to doubt the glorious divinity of our blessed Lord, and for years did he preach the heterodox doctrine, until one day he happened to hear a very eccentric old minister preaching from the text, “But there the glorious Lord shall be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their mast, they could not spread the sail.” “Now,” said the old minister, “you give up the Trinity, and your tacklings are loosed, you cannot strengthen your masts. Once give up the doctrine of three persons, and your tacklings are all gone; your mast, which ought to be a support to your vessel, is a rickety one, and shakes.” A gospel without a Trinity! it is a pyramid built upon its apex. A gospel without the Trinity! it is a rope of sand that cannot hold together. A gospel without the Trinity! then, indeed, Satan can overturn it. But give me a gospel with the Trinity, and the might of hell cannot prevail against it; no man can any more overthrow it than a bubble could split a rock, or a feather break in halves a mountain. Get the thought of the three persons, and you have the marrow of all divinity. Only know the Father, and know the Son, and know the Holy Ghost to be one, and all things will appear clear. This is the golden key to the secrets of nature; this is the silken clue of the labyrinths of mystery, and he who understands this, will soon understand as much as mortals ever can know.

II. Now for our second point—the united agency of the three persons in the work of our salvation. Look at the text, and you will find all the three persons mentioned. “I”—that is the Son—“will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter.” There are the three persons mentioned, all of them doing something for our salvation. “I will pray,” says the Son. “I will send,” says the Father. “I will comfort,” says the Holy Ghost. Now, let us, for a few moments, discourse upon this wondrous theme—the unity of the three persons with regard to the great purpose of the salvation of the elect. When God first made man, he said, “Let us make man,” not let me, but, “Let us make man in our own image.” The covenant Elohim said to each other, “Let us unitedly become the creator of man.” Likewise [So], when in ages far gone by, in eternity, they said, “Let us save man:” it was not the Father who said, “Let me save man, “but the three persons conjointly said, with one consent, “Let us save man.” It is to me a source of sweet comfort to think that it is not one person of the Trinity that is engaged for my salvation; it is not simply one person of the Godhead who vows that he will redeem me; but it is a glorious trio of Godlike ones, and the three declare, unitedly, “We will save man.”

Now, observe here, that each person is spoken of as performing a separate office. “I will pray,” says the Son; that is intercession. “I will send,” says the Father; that is donation. “I will comfort,” says the Holy Spirit; that is supernatural influence. O! if it were possible for us to see the three persons of the Godhead, we should behold one of them standing before the throne, with outstretched hands, crying day and night, “O, Lord, how long?” We should see one clothed [girt] with Urim and Thummim, precious stones, on which are written the twelve names of the tribes of Israel; we should behold him, crying unto his Father, “Forget not thy promises, forget not thy covenant;” we should hear him make mention of our sorrows, and tell forth our griefs on our behalf, for he is our intercessor. And could we behold the Father, we should not see him a listless and idle spectator of the intercession of the Son, but we should see him with attentive ear listening to every word of Jesus, and granting every petition. Where is the Holy Spirit all the while? Is he lying idle? Oh, no; he is floating over the earth, and when he sees a weary soul, he says, “Come to Jesus, he will give you rest;” when he beholds an eye filled with tears, he wipes away the tears, and bids the mourner look for comfort on the cross; when he sees the tempest-tossed believer, he takes the helm of his soul and speaks the word of consolation; he helpeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds; and, ever on his mission of mercy, he flies around the world, being everywhere present. Behold, how the three persons work together. Do not then say, “I am grateful to the Son”—so you ought to be, but God the Son no more saves you than God the Father. Do not imagine that God the Father is a great tyrant, and that God the Son had to die to make him merciful. It was not to make the Father’s love flow towards his people. Oh, no. One loves as much as the other; the three are conjoined in the great purpose of rescuing the elect from damnation.

But you must notice another thing in my text, which will show the blessed unity of the three—the one person promises to the other. The Son says, “I will pray the Father.” “Very well,” the disciples may have said, “we can trust you for that.” “And he will send you.” You see, here is the Son signing a bond on behalf of the Father. “He will send you another Comforter.” There is a bond on behalf of the Holy Spirit too. “And he will abide with you forever.” One person speaks for the other, and how could they, if there were any disagreement between them? If one wished to save, and the other not, they could not promise on one another’s behalf. But whatever the Son says, the Father listens to; whatever the Father promises, the Holy Ghost works; and, whatever the Holy Ghost injects into the soul, that God the Father fulfils. So, the three together mutually promise on one another’s behalf. There is a bond with three names appended—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. By three immutable things, as well as by two, the Christian is secured beyond the reach of death and hell. A Trinity of securities, because there is a Trinity of God.

III. Our third point is, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in believers. Now, beloved, these first two things have been matters of pure doctrine; this is the subject of experience. The indwelling of the Holy Ghost is a subject so profound, and so having to do with the inner man, that no soul will be able truly and really to comprehend what I say, unless it has been taught of God. I have heard of an old minister, who told a fellow of one of the Cambridge colleges, that he understood a language that he never learnt in all his life. “I have not,” he said, “even a smattering of Greek, and I know no Latin, but thank God, I can talk the language of Canaan, and that is more than you can.” So, beloved, I shall now have to talk a little of the language of Canaan. If you cannot comprehend me, I am much afraid it is because you are not of Israelitish extraction; you are not a child of God, nor an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

We are told in the text, that Jesus would send the Comforter, who would abide in the saints forever; who would dwell with them, and be in them. Old Ignatius, the martyr, used to call himself Theophorus, or the God-bearer, “because,” said he, “I bear about with me the Holy Ghost.” And truly every Christian is a God-bearer. “Know ye not that ye are temples of the Holy Ghost? for he dwelleth in you.” That man is no Christian who is not the subject of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; he may talk well, he may understand theology, and be a sound Calvinist; he will be the child of nature finely dressed, but not the living child. He may be a man of so profound an intellect, so gigantic a soul, so comprehensive a mind, and so lofty an imagination, that he may dive into all the secrets of nature, may know the path which the eagle’s eye hath not seen, and go into depths where the knowledge [ken] of mortals reacheth not, but he shall not be a Christian with all his knowledge, he shall not be a son of God with all his researches, unless he understands what it is to have the Holy Ghost dwelling in him and abiding in him; yea, and that for ever.

Some people call this fanaticism, and they say, “You are a Quaker; why not follow George Fox?” Well, we would not mind that much: we would follow any one who followed the Holy Ghost. Even he, with all his eccentricities, I doubt not, was, in many cases, actually inspired by the Holy Spirit; and whenever I find a man in whom there rests the Spirit of God, the Spirit within me leaps to hear the Spirit within him, and he feels that we are one. The Spirit of God in one Christian soul recognizes the Spirit in another. I recollect talking with a good man, as I believe he was, who was insisting that it was impossible for us to know whether we had the Holy Spirit within us or not. I should like him to be here this morning, because I would read this verse to him, “But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” Ah! you think you cannot tell whether you have the Holy Spirit or not. Can I tell whether I am alive or not? If I were touched by electricity, could I tell whether I was or not? I suppose I should; the shock would be strong enough to make me know where I stood. So, if I have God within me—if I have Deity tabernacling in my breast—if I have God the Holy Ghost resting in my heart, and making a temple of my body, do you think I shall know it? Call you it fanaticism if you will, but I trust that there are some of us who know what it is to be always, or generally, under the influence of the Holy Spirit—always in one sense, generally in another. When we have difficulties, we ask the direction of the Holy Ghost. When we do not understand a portion of Holy Scripture, we ask God the Holy Ghost to shine upon us. When we are depressed, the Holy Ghost comforts us. You cannot tell what the wondrous power of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost is; how it pulls back the hand of the saint when he would touch the forbidden thing; how it prompts him to make a covenant with his eyes; how it binds his feet, lest they should fall in a slippery way; how it restrains his heart, and keeps him from temptation. O you, who know nothing of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, despise it not. O despise not the Holy Ghost, for it is the unpardonable sin. “He that speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him, but he that speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him, either in this life, or that which is to come.” So saith the Word of God. Therefore tremble, lest in anything you despise the influences of the Holy Spirit.

But before closing this point, there is one little word that pleases me very much, that is “forever.” You knew I should not miss that; you were certain I could not let it go without observation. “Abide with you forever.” I wish I could get an Arminian here to finish my sermon. I fancy I see him taking that word “forever.” He would say, “for—forever;” he would have to stammer and stutter; for he never could get it out all at once. He might stand and pull it about, and at last he would have to say, “The translation is wrong.” And then I suppose the poor man would have to prove that the original was wrong too. Ah! but blessed be God we can read it—“He shall abide with you forever.” Once give me the Holy Ghost, and I shall never lose him till “forever” has run out; till eternity has spun its everlasting rounds.

IV. Now we have to close up with a brief remark on the reason why the world rejects the Holy Ghost. It is said, “Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.” You know what is sometimes meant by “the world”—those whom God in his wondrous sovereignty passed over when he chose his people: the preterite ones; those passed over in God’s wondrous preterition—not the reprobates who were condemned to damnation by some awful decree; but those passed over by God, when he chose out his elect. These cannot receive the Spirit. Again, it means all in a carnal state are not able to procure themselves this divine influence; and, thus it is true, “Whom the world cannot receive.”

The unregenerate world of sinners despises the Holy Ghost, “because it seeth him not.” Yes, I believe this is the great secret why many laugh at the idea of the existence of the Holy Ghost—because they see him not. You tell the worldling, “I have the Holy Ghost within me.” He says, “I cannot see it.” He wants it to be something tangible—a thing he can recognize with his senses. Have you ever heard the argument used by a good old Christian against an infidel doctor? The doctor said there was no soul, and he asked, “Did you ever see a soul?” “No,” said the Christian. “Did you ever hear a soul?” “No.” “Did you ever smell a soul?” “No.” “Did you ever taste a soul?” “No.” “Did you ever feel a soul?” “Yes,” said the man—“I feel I have one within me.” “Well,” said the doctor, “there are four senses against one; you have only one on your side.” “Very well,” said the Christian, “Did you ever see a pain?” “No.” “Did you ever hear a pain?” “No.” “Did you ever smell a pain?” “No.” “Did you ever taste a pain?” “No.” “Did you ever feel a pain?” “Yes.” “And that is quite enough, I suppose, to prove there is a pain?” “Yes.”

So the worldling says there is no Holy Ghost, because he cannot see it. Very well, but we feel it. You say that is fanaticism, and that we never felt it. Suppose you tell me that honey is bitter, I reply, “No, I am sure you cannot have tasted it; taste it and try.” So with the Holy Ghost; if you did but feel his influence, you would no longer say there is no Holy Spirit, because you cannot see it. Are there not many things, even in nature, which we cannot see? Did you ever see the wind? No; but you know there is wind, when you behold the hurricane tossing the waves about, and rending down the habitations of men; or when, in the soft evening breeze [zephyr], it kisses the flowers, and maketh dew-drops hang in pearly coronets around the rose. Did ye ever see electricity? No; but ye know there is such a thing, for it travels along the wires for thousands of miles, and carries our messages; though you cannot see the thing itself, you know there is such a thing. So you must believe there is a Holy Ghost working in us, both to will and to do, even though it is beyond our senses.

But the last reason why worldly men laugh at the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, is, because they do not know it. If they knew it by heartfelt experience and if they recognized its agency in the soul; if they had ever been touched by it; if they had been made to tremble under a sense of sin; if they had had their hearts melted, they would never have doubted the existence of the Holy Ghost.

And now, beloved, it says, “He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.” We will close up with that sweet recollection—the Holy Ghost dwells in all believers and shall be with them.

One word of comment and advice to the saints of God, and to sinners, and I will be done [and I have done]. Saints of the Lord! you have this morning heard that God the Holy Ghost is a person; you have had it proved to your souls. What follows from this? Why, it followeth how earnest you should be in prayer to the Holy Spirit, as well as for the Holy Spirit. Let me say that this is an inference that you should lift up your prayers to the Holy Ghost: that you should cry earnestly unto him; for he is able to do exceeding abundantly above all you can ask or think. See this mass of people. What is to convert it? See this crowd; who is to make my influence permeate through the mass? You know this place has now a mighty influence, and, God blessing us, it will have an influence not only upon this city, but upon England at large; for we now enjoy the press as well as the pulpit; and certainly, I should say, before the close of the year, more than two hundred thousand of my productions will be scattered through the land—words uttered by my lips, or written by my pen. But how can this influence be rendered for good? How shall God’s glory be promoted by it? Only by incessant prayer for the Holy Spirit; by constantly calling down the influence of the Holy Ghost upon us; we want him to rest upon every page that is printed, and upon every word that is uttered. Let us then be doubly earnest in pleading with the Holy Ghost, that he would come and own our labors; that the whole church at large may be revived thereby, and not ourselves only, but the whole world share in the benefit.

Then, to the ungodly, I have this one closing word to say. Ever be careful how you speak of the Holy Ghost. I do not know what the unpardonable sin is, and I do not think any man understands it; but it is something like this: “He that speaketh a word against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him.” I do not know what that means; but tread carefully! There is danger; there is a pit which our ignorance has covered by sand; tread carefully! you may be in it before the next hour. If there is any strife in your heart to-day, perhaps you will go to the ale-house and forget it. Perhaps there is some voice speaking in your soul, and you will put it away. I do not tell you, you will be resisting the Holy Ghost, and committing the unpardonable sin; but it is somewhere there. Be very careful. O, there is no crime on earth so black as the crime against the Holy Spirit! You may blaspheme the Father, and you shall be damned for it, unless you repent; you may blaspheme the Son, and hell shall be your portion, unless you are forgiven; but blaspheme the Holy Ghost, and thus saith the Lord: “There is no forgiveness, neither in this world nor in the world which is to come.” I cannot tell you what it is; I do not profess to understand it; but there it is. It is the danger signal; stop! man, stop! If you have despised the Holy Spirit— if you have laughed at his revelations, and scorned what Christians call his influence, I beseech you, stop! This morning seriously deliberate. Perhaps some of you have actually committed the unpardonable sin; stop! Let fear stop you; sit down. Do not drive on so rashly as you have done, Jehu! O slacken your reins! You who are such a profligate in sin—you who have uttered such hard words against the Trinity, stop! Ah! it makes us all stop. It makes us all draw up, and say, “Have I not perhaps so done?” Let us think of this; and let us not at any time trifle either with the words or the acts of God the Holy Ghost.

A Great Big Compilation of Charles Spurgeon Quotes

I’ve been reading a fair amount of Spurgeon’s sermons lately, and recording them for a new YouTube channel, Historic Homilies. If you would like to listen to audio readings of Spurgeon sermons, check out the channel!

Anyway, as I’m reading the sermons, I’m always highlighting stuff that I like, or even things that simply strike me as mildly interesting. This will be a place for me to compile all of those snippets, in no particular order. It will be an ever-growing list.

Sermon: My Restorer

• This sweetest of the Psalms sings of many mercies which the happy soul of the believer receives, and it traces all those benefits to one source, namely to the Good Shepherd himself.
  
  
• What is the true position of every believer? It is that of a sheep abiding close to its Shepherd.
  
  
• The fittest condition of a believer is in communion with Christ. It ought not to be a privilege occasionally enjoyed, it should be the everyday life of the soul. We are to abide in Jesus, walk with him, and live in him.
  
  
• We need fellowship with Jesus not as a luxury for red letter days and Sabbaths, but as the necessary provision of every work day of our lives.
  
  
• “Abide in me” is his word to us for all seasons, and we ought to strive to realise it; so that always, by night and by day, on the Sabbath and equally on the week days, in our joys and in our cares, we should abide in him. Christ is not merely a harbour of refuge, but a port for all weathers.
  
  
• Such deeds of love as Jesus has performed for us can never be adequately requited, but at the very least they ought not to be insulted by lukewarm and casual intercourse; they demand our heart, our soul, our all.
  
  
• Shall I be the bride of Jesus, and my love never be displayed in converse with him? Shame upon me, a thousand times shame, if I allow a day to pass unblest with thoughts, and words, and deeds of love.
  
  
• Now, men do not ordinarily need to be stirred up to that which is their delight; their spirits fly after their joys as eagles to the spoil. Where their heart moves with pleasure, it draws all their powers after it; and if indeed it be so (and who shall contradict it?), that fellowship with Christ is the richest of all joys, the intensest of all delights, why are we so hard to move? Oh, how sluggish are our hearts, how dull our spirits, that we do not fly after Jesus with rapture of desire, and do not labour perpetually to abide in him.
  
  
• If we be foolish and ignorant, where should we dwell but with the Teacher? If always weak, to whom should we resort but to the strong for strength? Let the child abide by its parent, the scholar with the master, the patient by his physician, the poor man with his helper. To whom should we go in our hourly needs but to him who has hitherto been our all in all?
  
  
• Israel could not afford to be a single day without the manna, nor can we be satisfied for an hour without the bread of life.
  
  
• Without his love in our hearts we become victims to other loves, which lead us into idolatry, plunge us into hurtful lusts, and poison the wells of our joy. We must either be enthralled by the surpassing love of Jesus, or we shall be fascinated by the world’s deceits.
  
  
• If any man wishes to grow in grace, if he wishes to be filled with the Spirit, if he wishes to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, specially if he wishes to be made like to him in all things who is the head, he must abide in Christ.

Sermon: Holy Work for Christmas

• This is the mystery of God incarnate for our sake, bleeding and dying that we might neither bleed nor die, descending that we might ascend, and wrapped in swaddling bands that we might be unwrapped of the grave-clothes of corruption.
  
  
• No man can speak of the things of God with any success until the doctrine which he finds in the book he finds also in his heart.
  
  
• Who can be astonished at anything when he has once been astonished at the manger and the cross? What is there wonderful left after one has seen the Saviour?
  
  
• As we think today of the birth of the Saviour, let us aspire after a fresh birth of the Saviour in our hearts.
  
  
• The wise men went wrong even with a star, stumbled into Jerusalem; the shepherds went straight away to Bethlehem. Simple minds sometimes find a glorified Christ where learned heads, much puzzled with their lore, miss him.

Sermon: Secret Sins

• Oh! if we had eyes like those of God, we should think very differently of ourselves. The sins that we see and confess are but like the farmer’s small samples which he brings to market, when he has left his granary full at home. We have but a very few sins which we can observe and detect, compared with those which are hidden to ourselves and unseen by our fellow creatures.
  
  
• Of all sinners the man who makes a profession of religion, and yet lives in iniquity, is the most miserable.
  
  
• Take heed above everything of a waxen profession that will not stand the sun; be wary of a life that needs to have two faces to carry it out; be one thing, or else the other. If you make up your mind to serve Satan, do not pretend to serve God; and if you serve God, serve him with all your heart.
  
  
• Hypocrisy is a hard game to play at, for it is one deceiver against many observers; and for certain it is a miserable trade, which will earn at last, as its certain climax, a tremendous bankruptcy.
  
  
• Do not measure sin by what other people say of it; but measure sin by what God says of it, and what your own conscience says of it.
  
  
• There are some who would not for the life of them say a wicked word in the presence of their minister, but they can do it, knowing God is looking at them. They are Atheists. There are some who would not trick in trade for all the world if they thought they would be discovered, but they can do it while God is with them; that is, they think more of the eye of man than of the eye of God; and they think it worse to be condemned by man than to be condemned by God. Call it by what name you will, the proper name of that is practical Atheism. It is dishonoring God; it is dethroning him; putting him down below his own creatures; and what is that, but to take away his divinity?
  
  
• You may as well ask the lion to let you put your head into his mouth. You cannot regulate his jaws: neither can you regulate sin. Once go into it, you cannot tell when you will be destroyed.
  
  
• I shall not fear to be called an Arminian, when I say, as Elijah did, “Choose you this day whom you will serve. If God be God, serve him; if Baal be God serve him.” But, now, make your choice deliberately; and may God help you to do it!

Sermon: A Mighty Saviour

• There are some who preach a gospel which is very well fitted to train man in morals, but utterly unfitted to save him.

Sermon: The Power of His Resurrection

• Behold the dead and buried One makes himself to live! Herein is a marvellous thing. He was master over death, even when death seemed to have mastered him: he entered the grave as a captive, but left it as a conqueror.
  
  
• The resurrection of Christ casts a side-light upon the gospel by proving its reality and literalness. There is a tendency in this generation to spirit away the truth, and in the doing thereof to lose both the truth and its spirit. In these evil days fact is turned into myth, and truth into opinion.
  
  
• Those who dream of being saved by their own good works are usually those who have no good works worth mentioning; while those who sincerely lay aside all hope of salvation by their own merits, are fruitful in every virtue to the praise of God.
  
  
• “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection.” Jesus first, and then the power of his resurrection. Beware of studying doctrine, precept, or experiences apart from the Lord Jesus, who is the soul of all. Doctrine without Christ will be nothing better than his empty tomb; doctrine with Christ is a glorious high throne, with the King sitting thereon.
  
  
• To raise the dead body of our Lord from the tomb was as great a work as the creation. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each one wrought this greatest miracle.
  
  
• He was compassed by the bonds of death, but he could not be held by them; even in his grave-clothes he came to life; from those wrappings he unbound himself; from the close-fastened tomb he stepped into liberty. If, in the extremity of his weakness, he had the power to rise out of the sepulchre, and come forth in newness of life, what can he not now accomplish?

Sermon: The Personality of the Holy Ghost

• Whenever I find a man in whom there rests the Spirit of God, the Spirit within me leaps to hear the Spirit within him, and he feels that we are one. The Spirit of God in one Christian soul recognizes the Spirit in another.
  
  
• “He shall abide with you forever.” Once give me the Holy Ghost, and I shall never lose him till “forever” has run out; till eternity has spun its everlasting rounds.
  
  
• Ever be careful how you speak of the Holy Ghost. I do not know what the unpardonable sin is, and I do not think any man understands it; but it is something like this: “He that speaketh a word against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him.” I do not know what that means; but tread carefully! There is danger; there is a pit which our ignorance has covered by sand; tread carefully!

Sermon: The Valley of the Shadow of Death

• “Christ would sooner lose his life than lose his people. He did die once to save them, and until he dies again they shall never perish.”
  
  
• “Brethren, is it not an easy thing to walk through a shadow? If you get up in the morning and saunter down the field, and the spiders have spun their cobwebs across the path in a thousand places, you brush them all away; and yet there is more strength in a cobweb than in a shadow. The Psalmist speaks without fear, for he regards his expected trials as walking through a shadow. Trials and troubles, if we have but faith, are mere shadows that cannot hinder us on our road to heaven. Sometimes God so overrules afflictions that they even help us on to glory; therefore let us walk on and never be afraid. Let us be sure that if we walk in at one end of the hollow way of affliction we shall walk out at the other. Who shall hinder us when God is with us?”
  
  
• “The shepherd is not only the keeper but the lord of the sheep. Remember that your Saviour is your Sovereign.”

Sermon: The Beatitudes

• “Christians ought to be seen and they ought to let their light be seen. They should never even attempt to conceal it. If you are a lamp, you have no right to be under a bushel, or under a bed—your place is on the lamp stand where your light can be seen.”

Sermon: A Faithful Friend

• “But our Lord Jesus never can forsake those whom once He loves, because He can discover nothing in us worse than He knew, for He knew all about us beforehand. He saw our leprosy and yet He loved us. He knew our deceitfulness and unbelief, and yet He did press us to His bosom. He knew what poor fools we were, and yet He said He would never leave us nor forsake us. He knew that we should rebel against Him and despise His counsel often. He knew that even when we loved Him our love would be cold and languid. But He loved for His own sake. Surely, then, He will stick closer than a brother.”
  
  
• “Deception is not confined to the tradesman’s shop. It prevails throughout society. The sanctuary is not exempt. The preacher adopts a sham voice. You hardly ever hear a man speak in the pulpit in the same way he would speak in the parlor. Why, I hear my brethren, sometimes, when they are at tea or dinner, speak in a very comfortable decent sort of English voice, but when they get into their pulpits, they adopt a sanctimonious tone and fill their mouths with inflated utterance, or else whine most pitifully. They degrade the pulpit by pretending to honor it—speaking in a voice which God never intended any mortal to have. This is the great house of sham. And such little things show which way the wind blows.”
  
  
• “No circumstance can possibly arise that ever will divide the Savior from His love to His people and the saint from his love to his Savior. He is ‘a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.’”
  
  
• “Farewell, with this one thought—we shall never, all of us meet together here again. It is a very solemn thought, but according to the course of nature and the number of deaths, if all of you were willing to come here next Sabbath morning, it is not at all likely that all of you will be alive. One out of this congregation will be sure to have gone the way of all flesh. Farewell, you that are appointed to death, I know not where you are—yon strong man, or yon tender maiden, with the hectic flush of consumption on her cheek. I know not who is appointed to death. But I do now most solemnly take my farewell of such a one. Farewell poor soul—and is it farewell forever? Shall we meet in the land of the hereafter, in the home of the blessed, or do I now bid you farewell now forever? I do solemnly bid farewell to you forever, if you live and die without Christ.”

Sermon: Safe Shelter

• “Let the unknown tomorrow bring with it what it may, it cannot bring us anything but what God shall bear us through! So let it come, and let it go. The Lord’s name be praised! We shall bless His name in it, and after it, and why not before it?”
  
  
• “We shall mount above the billows of our griefs, and sing as we lift our heads above the spray! We shall rise above the clouds of our present afflictions, and look down upon them as they float beneath our feet, rejoicing that the Lord has borne us, as upon wings, above them all, to bring us to Himself!”
  
  
• “You must not suppose that if you loved Jesus Christ, and put your trust in Him, you would give up the joy of life; you would just have found it! You would then, begin to be happy because you would have found what your soul needs to fill it.”

Sermon: Prayer, The Cure For Care

• “God has never yet failed to honor believing prayer. He may keep you waiting for a while, but delays are not denials, and He has often answered a prayer that asked for silver by giving gold.”
  
  
• “If you were to worry as long as you wished, you could not make yourself an inch taller, or grow another hair on your head, or make one hair white or black. So the Savior tells us and He asks, if care fails in such little things, what can care do in the higher matters of providence? It cannot do anything.”
  
  
• “You may pray about the smallest thing and about the greatest thing, you may not only pray for the Holy Spirit, but you may pray for a new pair of boots. . . . Say not that they are too little for Him to notice—everything is little in comparison with Him.”
  
  
• “Do not imagine that God needs any fine language. . . . Pray for what you want just as if you were telling your mother or your dearest friend what your need is. Go to God in that fashion, for that is real prayer, and that is the kind of prayer that will drive away your care.”

Sermon: A Most Needful Prayer Concerning the Holy Spirit

• “The Lord’s presence is our strength. God with us is our banner of victory. When He is not with us we are weaker than water, but in His might we are omnipotent.”
  
  
• “The Holy Ghost is not to us a luxury, but a necessity. We must have the Spirit of God or we live not at all in a spiritual sense.”
  
  
• “Souls are not saved by systems, but by the Spirit. Organizations without the Holy Ghost are windmills without wind. Methods and arrangements without grace are pipes from a dry conduit, lamps without oil. Even the most scriptural forms of church-government and effort, are null and void without the ‘power from on high.’”

Sermon: A Prayer For Revival

• “A church cannot be revived unless God revives it. Not a soul is saved, not a saint is quickened and made to grow except by the work of God.”
  
  
• “A child of God should rise above circumstances and rejoice in God. There is more in God to cheer you than in your circumstances to depress you.”

Sermon: God’s Thoughts of Peace, and Our Expected End

“No, beloved, His thoughts are not of evil. Though the Lord hates your sin, He does not hate you. Though He is the enemy of your follies, He is your own firm friend; yes, He is all the truer friend, because He fights against your faults.”

“I have never yet visited a member of this church who has expressed the least fear in their dying moments ... They pass away as if they were going to a wedding rather than to a tomb — as if it were the most joyful thing that ever happened to them to have reached their expected end. Doubts are all driven away when you see how believers die.”

“The Lord never forgets His own, for He has engraved them upon the palms of His hands. Never at any moment does Jehovah turn His thoughts from His beloved, even though He has the whole universe to rule. He says of His church, ‘I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.’”

“Welcome clouds, if showers of mercy are to come of them. God forbid we should always have sunshine, for that would mean drought. Let the clouds come if they bring a blessed rain.”

“Our troubles drive us to our knees. If it had not been for Esau, Jacob had never wrestled at Jabbok. I hope we usually go to our closets of our own accord, but often we are whipped there. Many of the most earnest prayers that ever rise to heaven come from us when we are in bondage under grief.”

“There are several subjects now upon the public mind, concerning which it is wise to say little or

nothing, because it is not easy to decide about them. Upon a certain matter one asks you this question,

and another asks you another question, and it is possible that you have so carefully weighed and measured the arguments both pro and con that you cannot come to a conclusion either way. Your thoughts differ from day to day, and therefore you do not yet know them. You need not be ashamed of this; it shows that you have a just sense of your own imperfect knowledge. A fool soon makes up his mind, because there is so very little of it, but a wise man waits and considers. The case is far otherwise with the only wise God. The Lord is not a man that He should need to hesitate, His infinite mind is made up, and He knows His thoughts. With the Lord there is neither question nor debate, ‘He is in one mind, and none can turn Him.’ His purpose is settled, and He adheres to it. He is resolved to reward them that diligently seek Him, and to honor those that trust in Him. He is resolved to remember His covenant forever, and to keep His promises to those who believe Him. His thought is that the people whom He has formed for Himself shall show forth His praise. The Lord knows them that are His; He knows whom He gave to His Son, and He knows that these shall be His jewels forever and ever. Beloved, when you do not know your own mind, God knows His mind.”

Sermon: God With Us

“Oh, man Christ, how could You bear the Deity within You! We know not how it was, but God knows. Let us adore this hiding of the Almighty in human weakness, this comprehending of the Incomprehensible, this revealing of the Invisible, this localization of the Omnipresent. Alas, I do but babble! What are words when we deal with such an unutterable truth?”

“Do not say, ‘We can do nothing.’ Who are you that can do nothing? God is with you. Do not say, ‘The church is feeble and fallen upon evil times’—no, ‘God is with us.’ We need the courage of those ancient soldiers who were desirous to regard difficulties only as whetstones upon which to sharpen their swords.”

“Whatever is possible or whatever is impossible, Christians can do at God’s command, for God is with us. Do you not see that the word, ‘God with us,’ puts impossibility out of all existence? Hearts that could never be broken will be broken if God is with us.”

Sermon: A Christmas Question

“As well might a gnat seek to drink in the ocean, as a finite creature to comprehend the Eternal God. A God whom we could understand would be no God.”

“So there be many spiritual sleepwalkers in our midst, who think that they are awake. But they are somnambulists, not awake, but men who walk and talk in their sleep.”

“The proof of the Christian is in the living.”

“Man grows from childhood up to manhood naturally; in grace, men grow from manhood down to childhood, and the nearer we come to true childhood, the nearer we come to the image of Christ. For was not Christ called “a child,” even after He had ascended up to heaven? ‘Thy holy child Jesus.’”

“Suppose you should see in tomorrow’s newspaper (although, by the way, if you believed anything you saw there you would probably be mistaken) . . .”

“See the maidens as they dance, and the young men as they make merry. And why is this mirth? Because they are storing the precious fruits of the earth, they are gathering together unto their barns wheat which will soon be consumed. And what, brothers and sisters, have we the bread which endures to eternal life and are we unhappy? Does the worldling rejoice when his corn is increased, and do we not rejoice when, “Unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given’?”

“What matters your poverty? ‘Unto you a child is born.’ What matters your sickness? ‘Unto you a Son is given.’ What matters your sin? For this child shall take the sin away, and this Son shall wash and make you fit for heaven.”

“How is it that we give so little to Christ who gave Himself for us? How is it that we serve Him so sadly who served us so perfectly? He consecrated Himself wholly, how is it that our consecration is marred and partial? Why are we continually sacrificing to self and not to Him?”

Miscellaneous

“As I hurried forward, with an awful speed, I began to doubt my very existence; I doubted if there were a world, I doubted if there were such a thing as myself. . . . But here the devil foiled himself: for the very extravagance of the doubt, proved its absurdity.”

“You are not Bible readers. You say you have the Bible in your houses; do I think you are such heathens as not to have a Bible? But when did you read it last? How do you know that your spectacles, which you have lost, have not been there for the last three years?”

“When a promise is general, you may take it in its widest possible meaning. Particulars restrain and restrict, but where there are no particulars, then you have unlimited range. ‘I will give you rest’—rest about everything, rest at all times, rest in every part of your nature.”

“Some have fallen into such a condition that they believe nothing, unless, indeed, it should not happen to be in the Bible—and then they will believe it. But if it is in God’s Word, then, of course, they feel it necessary to doubt it.”

“I believe that living in communion with God is the only sure cure for doubt.”

“But remember that the Christ, who invites the erring sinner before conversion, invites the erring believer after conversion.”

“This is the kind of rest that the Lord Jesus Christ gives—rest of the deepest, truest kind—rest which the world cannot give and which the world cannot possibly take away.”

“Now look here, beloved—there is none too much joy in the world. Do not you go about killing any whenever you see it. Rather try to encourage it, and if you see a young Christian happy in believing, and you do not happen to be as cheerful as he is, do not try and take his joy from him. . . . Warn the young believer of all the sin against which he should be on his guard, but do not hold up before him a gloomy view of the Christian life.”

“A hundred years ago, a man went to the Lord Jesus with this promise, ‘I will give you rest,’ and the Lord Jesus gave him rest. Fifty years ago, another man went with this promise, and he said ‘Lord, there it is! You said, “I will give you rest,”’ and the Lord gave him rest. Now tonight take that promise to yourselves; it is just as good as if it had never been fulfilled. I give my neighbor a check; he goes with it to the bank, and gets the cash for it. Now suppose the banker returns that check to me, and I go with it to the bank, and try to cash it again. ‘No,’ they say, ‘we have cashed that check once, and that is done with.’ But you may take God’s check, and go to the Bank of Heaven every day, and every hour in the day, and the check is just as good as if it had never been cashed before. ‘I will give you rest.’ You tried that when you were twenty-one; try it now that you are seventy. When you were forty, in the day of your trouble, you said, ‘Lord, give me rest;’ now that you are eighty, the promise still stands just as good as ever. God’s promises are not like a bundle of old checks that are done with, and sent back to the drawer—they are ever fresh and ever new.”

“Oh, the perfect repose, the unutterable bliss, that will be yours and mine before long. I say, ‘before long,’ for in this great congregation I do not doubt that there are several brothers and sisters who will see the King in His beauty before many weeks are gone. I could wish that it were my lot to go first among you, but if it may not be, will, you shall go on a little ahead, my brothers and my sisters, and we will follow in our turn.”

“I must, however, just remind you that, when Jesus says, ‘I will give you rest,’ He does not mean that He will make you lazy. Lazy people cannot rest—they never know what rest means. There must be labor to give us rest.”

“And he who begins to learn the faith in one way, and then tries to learn it in another way, and then attempts to learn it in yet another way, is more likely to be a skeptic than to be a saint.”

“Whenever the salt is put on the table, let us see in it a lesson to us to season our conversation with thanks, of which salt we cannot use too much.”

“Beloved, our crusty tempers and sour faces will never be evangelists. They may become messengers of Satan, but they will never become helpers of the gospel.”

“We should say of the Lord, ‘Let Him do what seems good to Him, if He will give us health, we will thank Him, if He will send us sickness, we will thank Him. If He indulges us with prosperity or if He tries us with affliction, if the Holy Spirit will but enable us, we will never cease to praise the Lord as long as we live.’”

“To the fullest performance of this duty there must be a subordination of ourselves to the will of God. We must not desire to have our own way; we must be content to say, ‘Not my will, but Yours be done.’ I cannot give thanks to God always for all things till my old self is put down. While self rules, the hungry horseleech is in the heart, and that is fatal to gratitude. Self and discontent are mother and child.”

“If a man is rich, and God has given him a thankful spirit, he cannot be too rich. If he will give thanks to God, he may be worth millions, and they will never hurt him. On the other hand, if a man has learned to give thanks to God, and he becomes poor, he cannot be too poor; he will be able to bear up under the severest poverty. The rich man should learn to find God in all things; the poor man should learn to find all things in God.”

“We ought also to thank God for the mercies which we do not see, as well as for those which are evident. We receive, perhaps, ten times as many mercies which escape our notice as those which we observe—mercies which fly by night on soft wings and bless us while we sleep.”

“It is not in the power of the enemy to injure the men of God when once self is dethroned, and the heart has learned to be resigned to the will of God. O, you are great, you are strong, you are rich, and you are mighty when you have bowed yourselves to the will of the Most High! Stoop that you may conquer! Bow that you may triumph! Yield that you may get the mastery. It is when we are nothing that we are everything—when we are weak that we are strong, it is when we have utterly become annihilated as to self, and God is all in all, it is then that we are filled with all the fullness of God. May the Holy Spirit conduct us into this spirit of perpetual thankfulness.”

“To have the feet taken out of the miry clay, and to feel them set on the rock of ages is a subject for eternal gratitude. But you have not received one spiritual mercy only, beloved brethren—nor two, nor twenty—you have had them strewn along your path in richest profusion. The stars above are not more numerous nor are the sands beneath more innumerable. Every hour, yes, every moment has brought a favor upon its wings. Look downward and give thanks, for you are saved from hell. Look on the right hand and give thanks, for you are enriched with gracious gifts. Look on the left hand and give thanks, for you are shielded from deadly ills. Look above you and give thanks, for heaven awaits you.”

“Nor is it alone for great and eternal benefits, but even for minor and temporary benefits we ought to give thanks. There ought not to be brought into the house a loaf of bread without thanksgiving. Nor should we cast a coal upon the fire without gratitude. We eat like dogs if we sit down to our meals without devoutly blessing God. We live like serpents if we never rise to devout recognition of the Lord’s kindness. We ought not to put on our garments without adoring God, or take them off to rest in our beds without praising Him. Each breath of air should inspire us with thanks, and the blood in our veins should circulate gratitude throughout our system.”

“You have heard, perhaps, of a Puritan who met his son, each one of them traveling some 10 or 12 miles to meet the other. And the son said to his father, ‘Father, I am thankful to God for a very remarkable providence which I have had on my journey here. My horse has stumbled three times with me, and yet I am unhurt.’ The Puritan replied, ‘My dear Son, I have to thank God for an equally remarkable providence on my way to you. For my horse did not once stumble all the way.’ If we happen to be in an accident by railway, we feel so grateful that our limbs are not broken, but should we not be thankful when there is no accident? Is not that the better thing of the two? If you were to fall into poverty, and someone was to restore you to your former position in trade, you would be very grateful. Should you not be grateful that you have not fallen into poverty? Bless God for His unknown benefits. Extol Him for favors which you do not see, always giving thanks to God for all things.”

The Power of Suggestion

A few years ago, I came across the results of The State of Theology doctrinal survey, put out by Ligonier, which had apparently found that an alarming percentage of professing evangelicals actually believe Jesus was a created being. When I looked at the survey itself, I found that this statistic was based on a question that went like this: “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. True or false?” A whopping 70% of participants either agreed with the statement or were unsure.

First off, it could very well be the case, and even seems pretty likely to me, that many evangelicals are fuzzy on their doctrine of Christ. I’m not disputing that. And the survey responses to this question in particular demonstrate that a lot of evangelicals don’t know what sort of errors to be on guard against.

Yet it also seems to me that the question is essentially a trick, or at least demonstrates the power of suggestion. The notion of Jesus being created sneaks in at the end of the sentence, making it feel secondary to what the question is primarily asking, and thus rendering it likely that many will overlook it and instead focus on Jesus being the “first and greatest being,” which of course sounds like something that should be affirmed.

It reminds me of the old joke I heard as a kid: “How many of each animal did Moses take on the ark?” Of course I confidently answered, “Two!” To which the other kid triumphantly declared, “It was Noah, not Moses!” This joke is effective at tricking people because the primary question being asked has to do with the number of animals taken on the ark. The person who took them on the ark is not being asked about, but assumed, which is what makes it easy to replace Noah with Moses without people realizing it.

Another example comes to mind. A teenager once asked me if Rome was still a country, by which I understood him to essentially be asking if Rome still existed today. So I answered yes. Someone else spoke up and said, “No, Rome’s a city!” Honest to goodness, I did know that Rome was a city and not a country. But the teen’s misidentification of Rome as a country simply fell out of my mind, as it wasn’t pertinent to the heart of his question as I understood it.

Similarly, in the theology survey’s true/false question, the primary concern of the question appears to be Jesus’s supremacy and greatness, not his status as a created or uncreated being. The notion of Jesus being created is assumed at the end of the sentence, and so people are naturally inclined to gloss over those last few words in the same way many gloss over Moses replacing Noah in the old joke.

Is the book of Jonah a literary masterpiece?

The ESV Study Bible states, “The book of Jonah is a literary masterpiece.” Is it really? Are we really culturally close enough, or linguistically steeped in Hebrew enough, to judge a book like Jonah as a literary masterpiece? What’s the basis for claims like this? By what standard can we judge an ancient Hebrew text to be a literary masterpiece? (The same questions could be asked of New Testament texts also—gospels, epistles, etc.)

My theory is that claims like these come from a starting point of revering the text as God’s word, which perhaps makes people feel compelled to laud the text from a literary standpoint as well. That’s just a theory—I don’t presume to know how people’s minds operate. And to be clear, I’m not trying to denigrate the text or make the counter-claim that Jonah’s actually bad literature. But would I be confident to say that it’s good literature? Not really. I’m happy to be agnostic on that. (In all honesty, I’m not exactly sure how to judge any literature as objectively good or bad, although I would at least feel significantly more comfortable doing so with literature of my own native tongue.)

Even though I’m not willing to say whether Jonah is good or bad literature, I would argue that neither assessment is inappropriate or problematic. I don’t mind saying, the book is exceedingly odd from a modern literary standpoint. Its pacing is unusual and it ends very abruptly, without any kind of conclusion one would expect by today’s standards. And this at least makes me less likely to think “literary masterpiece” when I read it. But again, who am I to say?

It seems possible to me that some bookish people put such a premium on literary quality that they couldn’t bring themselves to revere a text that was not “good” literature? But maybe there’s actually an important theological truth on display in the fact that the Bible may sometimes contain “bad” literature. The power of Scripture is not tied to literary eloquence or beauty. It’s the simple fact that it’s the word of the living God, even if it’s sometimes literarily warty from our perspective. Paul himself said, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom” (1 Cor. 2:1).

Believer’s Baptism: A Short Explanation

If someone were to ask me why our church practices believer’s baptism instead of infant baptism, this is a short explanation I would give them.

1. There is no clear example in the Bible of anyone being baptized as an infant. The consistent pattern seen in the New Testament is the baptism of believers.

2. Beyond that, there are multiple statements in the New Testament which strongly imply that baptism should only be undergone by a believer in Christ. I’ll just talk about one of them here.

“Baptism . . . now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience” (1 Peter 3:21).

This is an intriguing verse in some ways, but one simple conclusion we can draw from it is that baptism pertains to salvation. Peter actually says “baptism saves you.” That’s obviously a pretty strong statement, and if we’re honest it probably makes a lot of us uncomfortable. As evangelical Christians, we’re far more likely to emphasize that baptism doesn’t save you, and yet here’s Peter apparently telling us that it does.

But I’m convinced Peter’s not against us here, and we’re not against him. He does say “baptism saves you,” but the way he follows up that statement is very important: “not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience.” So he immediately clarifies that he’s not speaking in reference to the watery baptismal act itself. That is not what saves you. Instead, he’s speaking in reference to the appeal that is made in baptism, which is an appeal for a “good conscience.”

I believe this is basically another way of expressing the act of calling on the name of the Lord: “whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13). A person’s conscience is burdened by the weight of sin, and thus they recognize their need for a Savior and ask God for forgiveness based on the work of Christ. That is the “appeal” for a good conscience that Peter speaks of, and it’s essential to what baptism is all about. Peter can say “baptism saves you” because he’s speaking of baptism as a representation of this appeal that someone is making to God.

So in summary, baptism closely pertains to salvation and also represents our appeal to God for a good conscience. I don’t believe anyone can reasonably expect an infant to experience a burdened conscience due to sin, much less to then make an appeal to God for forgiveness based on the work of Christ. And for those reasons, infant baptism would seem to be out of place.

Devotion: Jesus Is Better (Hebrews 1:1-2)

The letter to the Hebrews has a very memorable introduction. The writer begins the letter in this way: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”

So the writer is making a contrast the past with the present. He says at various times in the past, and in all different kinds of ways, God spoke to his people through the prophets. The first person to be called a prophet in the Bible was actually Abraham. God spoke to Abraham through visions, and even in the form of a physical person in one instance, which is pretty intriguing. Moses was also a prophet. God spoke to Moses through the burning bush, and Moses in turn spoke on behalf of God to the Egyptians and to the Israelites.

Similar things could be said about Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and all of the minor prophets. This was God’s pattern in the Old Testament, to make his will known to his people through the mouths of prophets. And this is what the writer of Hebrews is talking about in verse 1.

But then in verse 2, he makes a very important contrast. He says, “but in these last days, [God] has spoken to us by his Son.” This is being presented to us as something that far surpasses any kind of communication or revelation that God had given in the past. Because the writer is then quick to point out that God’s Son is the “heir of all things,” and it was through him that the world itself was created. As great as the prophets of old were, these are things that simply could never be said about them. God didn’t send us just another prophet; he sent his own Son.

And right here at the beginning of Hebrews, we’re seeing what is arguably the most important theme of the entire book, and it’s the simple truth that Jesus is better. He’s better than the Old Testament prophets. Later on in this same chapter, he’s better than the angels. In chapter 8, his New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant. In chapter 9, his perfect atoning sacrifice is better than all animal sacrifice. Repeatedly throughout Hebrews, the writer is telling us that Jesus is better, and also warning us against putting our hope and our trust in anything else.

Hebrews was originally written to Jewish converts to Christianity. And their big temptation was to go back to the old religious rituals and ceremonies that were so familiar to them in the Old Covenant. That’s why they needed to hear the truth that Jesus is better. But the reality is, you and I need to hear this truth too. Our temptation may take a different form, but we’re all prone to look to other things besides Christ to give us peace or fulfillment or value, whether it be a relationship, or a career, or a social status. So we need to hear the truth that Jesus is better.

More than anything, we need a heart like the apostle Paul displayed, in Philippians chapter 3, where even in light of all of Paul’s achievements, he would still say, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Sometimes we might be tempted to think that the time period of the Old Testament was when God was really moving. Because obviously, it’s in the Old Testament that we read about spectacular events like the flood, or the parting of the Red Sea, or Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. And if we’re honest we might even admit that sometimes we wish we had lived in those days. But the writer of Hebrews helps us to recognize that, as Christians, we actually live in a greater era of the history of redemption. When we consider the revelation that God has now given his people through the person and work of Jesus, alongside of the outpouring of his Holy Spirit who indwells us as believers, it should actually make us thrilled and thankful to live in this era of redemption.

Because Jesus is better.

Podcast: Musings Under the Sun 003 | Providence, Part 1: Introduction

Today on Musings Under the Sun, I begin a series of thoughts and reflections on John Piper’s new book Providence.

Links:

John Piper, Providence (free PDF of the book) - https://bit.ly/3sgZIH0

John Piper, “Boasting Only in the Cross” (sermon from Passion 2000) - https://youtu.be/XajXpH908Yg

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