Spiritual Sight and Eternal Life
(No. 2953)
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1905,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 3,
1875.
"Yet a little while, and the world sees Me no more, but you see Me:
because I live, you shall live also." John 14:19.
IT is very noticeable in this verse and in many other parts of the New
Testament, what a sharp line of demarcation the Lord draws between His
people and the world–"The world sees Me no more, but you see Me." We
have the same Truth of God taught in John's first Epistle. "We know
that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the Wicked One." It is
quite evident that our Lord kept prominent in His teaching the
distinction between the regenerate and the unregenerate–the converted
and the unconverted–those who have been quickened by the Holy Spirit
and those who have remained dead in trespasses and sins. This
distinction which our Lord kept up so strikingly, should always be made
clear in every ministry. I feel that much evil comes of a mode of
address which is adopted by some of my ministerial brothers in which
they speak to the entire congregation as though all who were present
were Christians. That is a false theory to go upon because it is not at
all likely that any congregation ever gathered together will consist
wholly of Christians. The mere coming together for public worship,
nowadays, does not at all prove people to be followers of the Lord
Jesus Christ. When they met in the Catacombs or in the caves of the
earth and every worshipper had to carry his life in his hands, there
might have been some excuse for addressing the whole assembly as
Christians. In these days we know right well that there are unconverted
persons in the audience and it is proper, therefore, to have one
message to the saints and another message to the sinners–and to let it
be seen, all through the sermon, that the preacher is aware that the
Lord has made a distinction between Israel and Egypt–between them that
fear Him and them that fear Him not.
The same rule ought, I think, to be observed in prayer. It is a radical
mistake to have forms of prayer which take it for granted that the
whole congregation is saved. In this way, many persons are comforted
who ought to be awakened to a sense of their true spiritual condition.
At the grave, especially, things are said of men who have lived and
died in sin, which are calculated to make unsaved survivors think
lightly of their own lost state. There should be one prayer for the
saint and another prayer for the sinner–and all through the
supplication, as well as the preaching, there should be such a
distinction as Christ drew, in this verse, between His disciples and
"the world"–between those who continue to see Jesus and those who will
never behold His face with joy–either in this world or in that which
is to come.
If you look carefully at our text you will notice in it, first, a fact
which should solemnize the mind of every unconverted person here,
namely, that the religious privileges enjoyed by the world will, sooner
or later, be taken away–"Yet a little while, and the world sees Me no
more." Secondly, the text very clearly tells us that the Holy Spirit
has given to Believers a sight of Christ–"but you see Me." And,
thirdly, this sight is accompanied by a life which is linked with the
life of Christ–"because I live, you shall live also."
I. So the first lesson to be learned from our text is that THE PRESENT
PRIVILEGES ENJOYED BY THE WORLD WILL BE TAKEN AWAY–"Yet a little
while, and the world sees Me no more."
For a comparatively long time Jesus was seen here among the sons of
men. I call His life a long time, for every moment of it must have been
painful to Him, since, for His pure spirit to have dwelt in the midst
of impurity such as pervades this world must always have been painful.
Yet He tarried here and worked innumerable miracles of blessing.
Sometimes He fed the thousands who crowded around Him. He was
constantly healing the sick and doing everything that He could for
man's good–the summary of His life was that "He went about doing
good." He is gone, now, and the world sees Him no more. How shamefully
the men of the world treated Him! It would not be right for Him to come
back
to another persecution and a second Crucifixion. They said, "This is
the heir. Come, let us kill Him and let us seize on His inheritance."
They did kill Him, but He will never come here to be killed again! When
He comes the next time, it will be in a very different fashion and for
a very different purpose. The world will never again see Him as it saw
Him then–
"A lowly Man before His foes,
A humble Man, and full of woes." No, Earth, you have lost your
Miracle-Worker. You sick ones, you have lost your Great Physician. You
hungry ones, you have lost Him whose blessed hands fed you! Never again
will the weeping Mary and Martha see their brother raised to life.
Never again will sorrowing widows have their dead sons restored to them
from the grave's mouth. No, Jesus has gone and all the blessings which
He was known to bestow have ceased to be given, for the world sees Him
no more. It will see Him again, certainly, but in a very different
fashion–it will not see Him as Savior, a Friend and Physician–it will
only see Him with the rod of iron in His hand, passing sentence upon
those who said, "We will not have this Man to reign over us"!
Now, what has taken place as to the physical sight of Christ by the
sons of men will take place with all of you as to your mental sight of
Christ unless you receive from the Gospel an inner and spiritual sight
of Him. All of you have, in a certain sense, seen Jesus Christ. I mean
that when the Sabbath bells ring out, you are accustomed to go where
you hear concerning Christ and His great salvation. There you sit and
Jesus Christ is set forth evidently crucified among you–and blessed
are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear what Prophets
and kings in vain desired to see and hear concerning Christ in days of
yore. You go to your houses and there is that precious Book, the Bible,
which contains the image of your Savior's face almost on every page.
Your family altar brings Jesus very near even to some of you
unconverted ones! The Kingdom of God has, indeed, come near to you.
Nowadays Jesus Christ is preached in almost every street. A man need
not go far, especially on the Sabbath, if he wants to hear about Jesus
Christ. So far as the hearing with the ears is concerned, He may be
heard of almost everywhere! But it will not always be so. Some of you
will soon go where the Sabbath bell is never heard. You will go where
Sabbaths, themselves, are all unknown, except as dreadful memories of
shamefully neglected privileges. You will go where no minister will
tell you of Grace, and mercy, and pardon bought with blood. You will go
where you will never hear the music of–
"Those charming bells, Free Grace and dying love."
The very opposite sound to that will forever grate upon your ears!
There will be no godly teacher there to urge you to seek the Lord in
your youth and to give Him your heart while you are yet young. There
will be no loving parents there, with tears, sighs and pious examples
striving to lead you to Jesus. There will be no faithful preacher
there, earnestly endeavoring, in simple language, to tell you the old,
old story and to point you to Christ upon the Cross! Only a little
while and there shall be no Bible for you to read, no Mercy Seat to
which you can go, no promise which you can plead, no blood of Jesus in
which you can ask to be washed–for you will be beyond the line of hope
and beyond the reach of mercy. You will be in Hell.
I am sure that if I had to come to you and say that I had received a
Revelation from Heaven telling me that never again would some of you be
permitted to attend a place of worship, never again to read your Bible,
never again to kneel in prayer–but that you were forever to be denied
all these eternal privileges–you would feel unhappy, indeed. I wish
you felt something of that kind of unhappiness now, because to have
these privileges and yet to neglect them is as bad as–in some
respects, it is even worse than–it would be to have the privileges
taken away! Godly Mr. Rogers, of Dedham, was preaching on one occasion
about the Scriptures and their value, and endeavoring to impress upon
the people the duty of prizing the Word and being obedient to it. And,
to bring the Truth of God home very clearly to their consciences, he
asked them to imagine that he was commissioned to take away the Bible
from them. He took it up from the pulpit and turned round with it in
his hand. "There," he said, "you are never to have it again. It has
been a dreary Book to many of you–you have not cared for it and you
have neglected the reading of it, so I must take it away and you shall
never hear another sermon from it, or hear anything more read from it."
Then he pictured them all weeping and begging that the Book might be
brought back to them again. And I would that, even though the Lord
should not take these privileges away from you while you are in this
life, you might nevertheless prize them, for this life will soon be
ended–and then these privileges will be gone forever!
Notice also that our Savior said, "Yet a little while, and the world
sees Me no more." Oh, it is such a little while even if we live the
longest life that is possible to men! But human lives are often cut
short, suddenly and unexpectedly. Useful servants of the Lord Jesus
Christ are taken away in the very midst of their usefulness and the
Home-call to them is a message to us, saying, "Be you, also, ready, for
in such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man comes." Some of you
young people are reckoning that it will be a long while before you need
come to a decision, but, I pray you, think how short your lifetime may
be! Certainly, if you do ever reach that period in which the voice of
mercy shall cease to have a syllable to address you, you will then
realize what a little time it has been. Why, even if a man could live
as long as Methuselah, yet, if he once found himself shut up in Hell, a
life of a thousand years would seem to be but as a pin's point compared
with the endless eternity–and he would grieve and lament bitterly that
he had wasted in sin those winged hours upon which his destiny
throughout eternity had hung! A little while, Sinner, and you will
never have another invitation to come to Christ! A little while and
there will be no outstretched arms of Him who died upon the Cross, "the
Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." A little
while–and such a little while–and you will see Jesus no more as a
Savior, but you will see Him as your Judge and hear Him say, not,
"Come, you blessed," but, "Depart, you cursed." Those who have outward
privileges and yet neglect them, shall have them taken from them–and
then how will they dare to appear before God?
II. Let us now turn to the second point, which is far more sweet to our
souls. Let us think upon HOW THE HOLY SPIRIT HAS GIVEN SIGHT TO THE
PEOPLE OF GOD–"The world sees Me no more, but you see Me."
In the deepest meaning of the word, no one ever truly sees Christ until
the Holy Spirit opens his eyes. There are some persons who have very
strange notions of what it means to see Christ. I occasionally have to
talk with poor, ignorant people–who do not, however, think themselves
ignorant–who tell me that they have seen Christ. But I soon discover
that they mean that they fancy they have seen Him with their natural
eyes! I tell them that it is impossible and then they tell me of some
dream in which they think they saw Him. Now, my dear Friend, even
supposing you had a vision and that you did see Christ in it–do not
place any reliance upon that. There is many a man who has had a vision
of the devil, yet has gone to Heaven–and there is many a man who has
had a vision of Christ yet has gone to Hell! There is nothing in that.
Did not great multitudes who lived in the days of Christ upon the
earth, see Him with their natural eyes? Yet they were not saved! Many
even stood around the Cross and saw Him die in that dread culmination
of His life-work, when He was paying the price of His people's
redemption. They stood and gazed at Him, but their hearts were not
softened even by that matchless sight, for they jeered and jested while
He was in His death-throes! That which can be seen with these eyes is
of little consequence! The true sight of Christ–that sight which alone
can save–is a spiritual'sight, the sight of the inward soul!
Our Lord Jesus Christ said to His disciples, "You see Me." Let us
notice the ways in which Believers see Him in a spiritual sense. We see
Him, first, with that earliest glance which continues throughout our
whole lives–the life-look at the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember when
you first saw Him thus. Could any other word describe your experience?
You did not see anything with your natural eyes, but you perceived, in
your soul, that Jesus Christ stood as the one Substitute for sinners
and that, trusting in Him, your sin would be forever removed from you.
And you trusted in Him. You looked unto Him and were lightened, and
your face was not ashamed. Possibly before that you had been a diligent
student of the Scriptures and you may have been a tolerably intelligent
theologian. But you knew more of Christ in a single moment, when you
had looked to Him with that saving glance, than you had ever learned
from any book, or heard from any ministry! Then you could say, "I have
heard of You with the hearing of the ears, but now my eyes see You."
Then you knew what was meant by pardon through His precious blood and
justification by His righteousness, for you had looked for yourself and
had seen that Christ is able to save, for He had saved you! From that
moment you began to see Christ with the opened eyes of your spiritual
understanding. Just as Christ's disciples were made to know that He was
in the Father and that the Father was in Him, so you began to know that
Jesus of Nazareth was in you and that you were in Him! You began to
understand the eternal relationship between Christ and the Father, and
between the Father and yourself. You began to perceive the offices of
Christ as Prophet, Priest and King. You began to study Him–the
different points of His Character, the different stages of His life,
the different gleams of Glory that shone even amid the darkness of His
death–and so you saw Him.
O dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, since that happy day we have had
many precious sights of Christand we have been constantly led to see
more and more of Him! The Holy Spirit has lit up Christ to us by
degrees, just as I have sometimes seen the lighting up of an
illumination in which some one word was to be spelt out in letters of
light. They have brought it out, letter by letter, with bright lamps
and, at last, you could see the whole word. I am afraid that we have
not yet learned to spell the whole of Jesus Christ's name, but what we
do know, we would not give up for twice ten thousand worlds! We do not
yet see Him so clearly as we shall see Him, by-and-by, but still, our
spiritual understanding does perceive far more of Him than it once did
and we expect, in due time, to "be able to comprehend with all saints
what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the
love of Christ which passes knowledge."
If you follow the run of the chapter from which our text is taken, you
will be helped further to perceive how it is that we see Christ.
According to the 12th verse, we see Christ by participating in His
power ' 'He that believes on Me, the works that I do shall he also do;
and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto My Father."
A preacher who has never seen Christ in the way I have been describing,
delivers sermons which are without spiritual power. But if anyone–even
the feeblest among us–will teach others the Truths of God which he has
received from the Holy Spirit, feeling that all power in Heaven and
earth is given to Christ and that, therefore, He has sent His servants
to preach His Gospel to all nations–such a man, I say, will have the
Presence of Christ and shall realize it by the power which will rest
upon him and by the results which will follow his testimony! Yes,
Brothers and Sisters, Christ is still with His people! The power of
Christ is not only up there in Heaven, but it is given to Him on earth
as well, and He clothes with His Spirit those who preach His Gospel
simply and humbly! And that Spirit breaks men's hearts and binds them
up again–slays men spiritually and makes them alive again–and does
great marvels so that the power of Jesus Christ is truly seen in the
midst of the assembly! Out of His mouth proceeds that two-edged sword
with which the battles of Divine Grace are fought and won. I wonder how
many of you who are here have ever seen Christ in this sense–that His
power has rested upon you in all forms of Christian service that are
done as unto the Lord?
If you have seen Christ thus, you have also seen Him in the sense
described in the 13th and 14th verses, pleading through you and with
you in prayer–"Whatever you shall ask in My name, that will I do, that
the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask anything in My
name, I will do it." Have you ever prayed in that way, as though Christ
had said to you, "Go to My Father and tell Him I sent you. Use My name
with Him, for My name has authority in the courts of Heaven"? It is,
indeed, blessed, when you are pleading with God, to feel that Christ is
pleading through you–to see Him, as it were, as the great High Priest
of our profession, standing before God with outstretched hands,
pleading the merit of His blood that we may prevail! It is powerful
pleading when you have Christ praying by your side and know that you
have Him there–and when you feel that your prayer is not the petition
of a suppliant who is pleading alone, but the utterance of one who is
covered up and lost sight of in the Person of the greater Pleader–the
Lord Jesus Christ. This is, indeed, seeing Christ. "You see Me," said
Christ to His disciples, and we do see Him when we realize His power
with us in the hour of prayer!
We see Christ, again, when we are obedient to His commands, for the
15th verse tells us that He said to His disciples, "If you love Me,
keep My commandments." A real Christian does what Christ bids him do,
whether he is observed of men or not, because he realizes that he is in
the Presence of Christ. The very best check upon sinful passions and
the most Divine incentive to spiritual earnestness is the Presence of
Christ. O Brothers and Sisters, I cannot tell you what a delight it is
to feel sure that Christ is near you and observing you–to feel as if
His hands were upon your shoulder and His shadow resting upon you, like
that of a father leaning over his child and guiding the child's hand as
he writes his copy– while you are trying to serve Him and yielding
yourself up completely to Him, saying, "Tell me, my Lord, what You have
for me to do and, by Your Grace, I will do it, for I live in Your sight
and to please You is the one desire of my soul."
Sinners never see Christ in this way. In fact, they do not care
anything about Him. The children of God constantly see Jesus Christ
before them so that if they are tempted to sin, they cry, "How can we
do this great wickedness and sin against God?" If they are tempted to
slumber when they ought to be actively engaged in His service, they can
hear Christ knocking at their door and saying to them, "Open to Me."
And they rise from their beds and open the door to Him and go forth
with Him to do His will! You can, each one of you judge, Beloved,
whether in this sense Christ can say to you, "You see Me."
Christ is also to be seen by Believers in the efficacy of His Spirit.
Read what He says in the 17th verse–"Even the Spirit of Truth; whom
the world cannot receive, because it sees Him not, neither knows Him:
but you know Him; for He dwells with you and shall be in you." Have you
ever felt the Presence and power of the Spirit of God working within
you? Does He ever comfort you when you are depressed? Does He ever
guide you when you are in perplexity? Has He ever come upon you to calm
you when you have been getting excited with worldly joy? Have you ever
known the Spirit of God illuminate a Truth which before you could not
understand? Have you not known Him to point out to you a way of
answering your accuser or adversary which you had not thought of,
giving you in the same hour the very words that you should speak? Some
of us know what it is to be more swayed by the Spirit of God than by
our own spirit–and it should be so with every Christian. He should
yield himself up absolutely to that Divine Spirit who will bear him
wherever He pleases, upward or downward, to ecstatic joy or to holy
sorrow, but always onward in that which glorifies God! Those who feel
this power of the Holy Spirit really see Jesus Christ and so hear Him
say to them as He said to His disciples, "You see Me."
And, Beloved, I must add here what some of you know right well–I would
that we all knew it more and more– that Jesus Christ is to be seen by
that near, and dear, and intimate communion which He permits His
children to have with Him. They are to be daily walking with God, but
as the sea, though always full, is not always at flood-tide, so the
Believer, who lives nearest to God, will not always experience
precisely the same delights. There are high days and holidays for
us–have you not had them? We hardly like to talk about them, for the
love-dealings of Christ with our souls are such sacred secrets between
Himself and us that we can scarcely speak of them to others. We have
known such joy in fellowship with Christ that we have felt almost as
the Apostle did when he said that "He was caught up into Paradise and
heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter."
Indeed, we cannot utter them, for human language can never express the
bliss which sometimes fills our spirit when Jesus Christ reveals
Himself to us! It is vain for infidels to tell me that there is no
Christ for I have seen Him! When men tell us that there is no Heaven,
we say, as Bunyan's pilgrims did, "What? No Mount Zion? Did we not see
from the Delectable Mountains, the gate of the city?" Do they tell us
that the love of Christ is a myth? We reply that it has been shed
abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit and that, therefore, we can
never doubt its reality and power!
There is an individual who is accustomed to go down the sewers and who
has no sense of smell–"He has got no nose," a man told me once.
Suppose that this man comes into a place which has been recently
perfumed with perfume of roses or lavender water and, while we are all
saying, "What a delicious perfume!" He says, "I do not believe there is
any perfume here." But we are sure that there is. He says that he
cannot see it, he cannot hear it, he cannot taste it, he cannot feel it
and he cannot smell it, so he does not believe it is there. No, poor
man, he has lost one of his senses, so he cannot perceive it. And the
world has lost its spiritual sense–that delicate nostril which can
perceive the sweet perfume of the Rose of Sharon and detect His
Presence wherever He may be! But we, Beloved, are not to be argued out
of an undoubted fact of our spiritual experience! It is useless to try
to pervert a genuine Christian from the faith because he knows it, for
he has tasted and handled it, and felt it! It is not a matter of
opinion to him, but a matter of fact. The heathen philosophers said of
the early Christians, that they were the most obstinate men and women
that they ever met. They said that the plainest arguments were lost
upon them, for they clung to certain things which they asserted to be
facts and no one could, by any logic whatever, induce them to deny
those facts! If we are genuine Christians, we are of the same stamp as
those early saints. We might change our opinions, but we cannot give up
our knowledge of the great facts of our spiritual experience–and we do
know that Jesus Christ has revealed Himself unto us as He does not unto
the world–and we dare not deny that it is so!
He has given us such sweet fellowship with Himself that only in Heaven,
itself, can we ever be happier! Sometimes we have seemed to sit on the
very doorstep of Heaven and have heard the music inside–and we have
wondered whether they could be happier, there, than we were outside. We
have felt that they must have larger capacity for joy than we had if
they had more joy than we possessed, for we were as full of joy as we
could be! Well, this being the case with us, we cannot be made to deny
the faith by anything that may be said to us by those who are strangers
to our joy. "You see Me," said Christ to His disciples and, oftentimes
we have felt that He might also say to us, "You see Me," for, in the
highest sense, it is true.
Beloved Friends, I must leave this point, but I wish, first, to ask
everyone here, "Have you thus seen Jesus Christ? Do you see Him at this
moment?" Remember that you must spiritually see Him with the eyes of
your soul or else, when He comes to Judgment, you will in vain call
upon the rocks to hide you from His face! Recollect, also, that you
cannot see Christ till the Spirit of God opens your eyes. You are
spiritually blind. You are dead! And only the Spirit of God can make
you live and give you sight. Oh, that the prayer might ascend from
every unsaved soul here, "Blessed Spirit, breathe into me the breath of
life that my dead soul may be quickened and that my darkened mind may
be enlightened that I may truly see You." May the Lord first give you
that prayer–and then may He graciously answer it in your happy
experience this very hour!
III. My last point is this–THE HOLY SPIRIT NOT ONLY GIVES US LIGHT,
BUT HE ALSO GIVES US LIFE. Jesus said to His disciples, "Because I
live, you shall live also."
Every soul that has seen Christ in the ways I have described is a
living soul, and such a living soul that as long as Christ lives, and
because Christ lives, that soul shall also live! What a precious
promise this is! One needs to have a whole sermon upon it–"Because I
live, you shall live also."
That is to say, we first get spiritual life from Christ. We are dead in
trespasses and sins, but a glance from His eyes through the gracious
operation of the Holy Spirit, creates the first spark of life within us
and then we look to Him–and so we live! We find in Jesus Christ and in
context and in communion with Him, all that our souls need, so that we
not only derive from Him spiritual life, but also the sustenance of
that life.
Then, we get the life of Christ reproduced in us by living in
fellowship with Him–a life which is to bloom and come to perfection in
the eternal life with Christ in Glory. All the life that any Believer
ever had on the face of the earth, he must have derived from the Lord
Jesus Christ for he had none of his own. And when the Holy Spirit had
given him this life from Jesus Christ, he could not keep it alive by
his own power. He had to remain in union with Jesus if he was to
continue to live, as Christ reminded His disciples, "Without Me,
(severed from Me), you can do nothing." Let us recognize this fact,
Beloved, that we who have seen Christ have a new life within us which
we did not create and which we could not nourish and sustain, but which
Jesus keeps, feeds and preserves through the gracious ministry of the
Holy Spirit! And thus we live as the world does not live–it is dead in
sin, but we are alive unto God by Jesus Christ!
This life, being Christ's life, is an everlasting life.' 'I give unto
them eternal life," says Christ concerning His sheep. Somebody once
said, "Ah, but they may lose it!" What nonsense! How can they lose
eternal life! How can that be eternal which comes to an end? "Eternal
life" means a life that never ends! Language can only be meant to
conceal men's thoughts if it does not mean that! But God uses language,
not for the sake of concealing His Truth, but in order to reveal it!
And when the Lord Jesus Christ puts everlasting life into a Believer,
he has everlasting life and he will live forever! And for this reason
he will live forever because Christ will live forever. "Because I live,
you shall live also." When Christ can die, then can the Believer
perish. When it shall be possible for Christ to be cast out of
Heaven–for His power and Glory to be taken from Him, yes, for His very
Deity to wax old and grow effete with age–then may the Believer's life
be quenched, but not till then!
What strange notions some people seem to have about this matter! The
Doctrine of Final Perseverance, or the Eternal Preservation of
Believers, seems to me to be written as with a beam of sunlight
throughout the whole of Scripture! If that is not true, there is
nothing at all in the Bible that is true, for that Truth of God is
there if anything is! It is impossible to understand the Bible at all
if it is not so. But it is so, glory be to God! What do the objectors
say concerning the mystical body of Christ? Do they suppose that
Christ's body keeps losing its members, as lobsters lose their claws,
and grow fresh ones? Is that their strange simile–that the blessed
mystical body of Christ goes on changing its members and getting new
ones? To suggest such a monstrosity is approaching blasphemy! The
members of Christ's body must be safe forever, for they are one with
Him. Shall Christ be mutilated? Shall He be cut in pieces and His
beauty marred? That is impossible–
"Once in Christ in Christ forever! Nothing from His love can sever."
He never did and He never can lose one of those who are in Him!
Put your trust in Jesus, dear Friends, and this passage shall be true
concerning you, "As many as received Him, to them gave He power to
become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name; which
were born, not of blood,
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God"–"being born-again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,
by the Word of God, which lives and abides forever. For all flesh is as
grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass
withers and the flower thereof falls away; but the Word of the Lord
endures forever." Blessed is the man who has this Word of the Lord sown
in His heart as a living seed which cannot die or be destroyed! The
Lord grant this blessing to each one of you, for His dear Son's sake!
Amen.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: JOHN 14:15-31.
Verses 15-17. If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I willpray the
Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with
you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive,
because it sees Him not, neither knows Him but you know Him; for He
dwells with you, and shall be in you. "I am going away from you. You
will not have My personal Presence much longer, but I will send you One
who will never go away from you, for whom there is no death and no
departure–'another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever, even
the Spirit of Truth'–who knows the Truths of God, who can teach the
Truths of God and who applies the Truth to the hearts and consciences
of men–'whom the world cannot receive, because it sees Him not,
neither knows Him.'" Let us not imagine that the world will ever
receive the Spirit of God. It is supposed, by some, that the world gets
more enlightened from age to age, but that is a supposition for which
there is not the slightest foundation! The death of human nature never
develops into life! The darkness brought by the Fall never becomes the
Light of God without the operation of a supernatural power. It is the
Spirit of God that works this change in God's own children–"but you
know Him, for He dwells with you, and shall be in you." He was with
them in a certain sense even while Christ was here, otherwise they
would have learned nothing. And He was more fully in them when Christ
had gone back to Heaven–hence they learned, after Pentecost, more of
the meaning of the Gospel than they had ever gathered from the teaching
of their Master.
18, 19. I willnot leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a
little while, and the worldsees Me no more; but you see Me: because I
live, you shall live also. There is a continuous sight of Christ even
as there is a continuous life in Christ. They who have not received the
life of Christ cannot see Christ. How can there be eyes without life?
And how can there be the spiritual sight of Christ without the
spiritual life in you?
20. At that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me,
and I in you. This is a wonderful trinity of unities, each one a
mystery, but each one to be known by the Believer when he is instructed
of the Spirit of God–Christ in the Father, the saints in Christ, and
Christ in them. He that experimentally knows what it is to be in Christ
knows more than all the secular philosophers who have ever lived!
21. He that has My commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves
Me: and he that loves Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love
him and will manifest Myself to him. Oh, what privileges are enjoyed by
those who love the Lord Jesus Christ! We cannot help loving Him and, by
that love we are assured that the Father, Himself, loves us and we have
the promise that Christ will yet more and more manifest Himself to us!
22. Judas said unto Him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that You will
manifest Yourself unto us, and not unto the world?"Why are we the
subjects of this election, this selection, this gracious
manifestation?"
23. Jesus answered andsaid unto him, if a man loves Me, he will keep My
words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make
Our abode with him. Just as the angels came to believing Abraham and
sojourned for a little while with him, so will Jesus and the Father,
strangers in this world, become sojourners with us. Jesus says of the
man who loves Him, "My Father will love him, and We will come unto him
and make Our abode with him." This is not a mere call, it is
residence–"We will make Our abode with him." God, whom the Heavens
cannot contain, yet comes and dwells in a lowly heart and abides with a
loving spirit–"We will come unto him and make our abode with him."
There is an aroma about these words which I cannot convey to you. But
if you have the spiritual nostrils, you will perceive their fragrance
for yourselves.
24. He that loves Me not keeps not My sayings: and the word which you
hear is not Mine, but the Father's which sent Me. You see that the Lord
Jesus Christ does not profess to be a great original thinker, but He
speaks as the Messenger sent by the Father. And unless we, also, are
commissioned and taught by the Father, of what value will our
poor feeble thoughts be? Our only power lies in the fact that we do not
utter our own thoughts, but the Truths of God which have been taught to
us by the Holy Spirit! To some, this may look like weakness, but it is
real strength.
25-27. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you.
When men in the East met one another, they usually gave the salutation,
"Peace be unto you," "Peace be to this house." But Christ says–
27. My peace I give unto you: not as the world gives, give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. ' 'I do not
say, 'Peace, Peace,' where there is no peace. It is not a mere formal
salutation, but there is a real, true peace communicated to you when I
thus speak."
28. You have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto
you. If you loved Me, you would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the
Father: for My Father is greater than I. Love makes us rejoice in the
prosperity of the one we love. The Lord Jesus Christ, in coming to this
earth, had taken upon Himself a subordinate position–He had become the
stepping-stone between man and God. But now that He was returning to
His Glory–returning to His Father–it was the duty of those who loved
Him to rejoice–and we should do the same now. He has left behind Him
the humiliation, the scorn, the spitting, the Crucifixion–and who
among us, who truly loves Him, would wish to bring Him back to this
poor earth as He same at first? Ah, no! It is well that all that is
over! There is sweetest music to our ears in our Lord's declaration,
"It is finished," and our soul swims in a sea of light as we think of
the ineffable Glory with the father to which He has returned forever!
29-31. And now I have told you before it comes to pass, that when it is
comes to pass, you might believe. Hereafter I will not talk much with
you: for the Prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me. But
that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave
Me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence. "Let us go to
Gethsemane and to the Passion! Let us go fulfill the Father's will!" It
was a sure proof of Christ's love when He went forward from speaking to
sufferingthat He might save His own forever!