A Promise and Precedent

A Promise and Precedent

(No. 3127)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1909.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
JANUARY 4, 1874.

"He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive ofMine, and shall show it
unto you." John 16:14.

[Other Sermons by Mr. Spurgeon, upon this passage, are as follows–
Sermons #565, Volume 8–THE HOLY SPIRIT GLORIFYING CHRIST; #2212,
Volume 37–"HONEY IN THE MOUTH!" and #3062, Volume 53–THE SPIRIT'S
OFFICE TOWARDS DISCIPLES]

JESUS CHRIST, our gracious Lord and Master, is here speaking of the
Holy Spirit and He says of Him, "He shall glorify Me: for He shall
receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you." Our Lord Jesus Christ, in
His own personal teaching, did not plainly declare all the Truths which
He intended to reveal because the Holy Spirit was not then given to His
disciples and they were not, at that time, able to receive all that He
might have taught them. He Himself said to them, "I have yet many
things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now." The germ of
everything that would be revealed was in the teaching of Christ, but
not the full development of it. That was left till after the Holy
Spirit had been given on the day of Pentecost. In the Acts of the
Apostles, in their various Epistles and in the Apocalypse given to
John, we have the full Revelation of the Truth of God–the Holy Spirit
there taking of the things of Christ and revealing them to us and also,
according to His promise, showing us, in the Book of the Revelation,
"things to come."

Note that our Savior did not go away from His disciples and leave the
Spirit to come upon them without previously intimating to them the fact
that He was coming. He prepared them for the change. While He was here
upon earth, He was personally at the head of His people and as it was
His purpose that the Holy Spirit should act as His Substitute during
His absence, He informed His followers that it would be so. He told
them that the Spirit of God would come, that He would more fully reveal
the great Truths which He had Himself taught to His disciples and that
He would apply the Truths already revealed to the hearts of His people
so that they would be able to understand much that had, up to now, been
beyond their comprehension. There was no separation of the dispensation
of Christ from that of the Holy Spirit, but they were dovetailed and
pieced into one another by these memorable words of the Lord Jesus just
before He went to Gethsemane and Calvary–"He shall glorify Me: for He
shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you."

In considering this declaration of our Savior with regard to the Holy
Spirit, we shall view it in three aspects, praying that God will make
it a blessing while we are meditating upon it. We shall, first, view
the text doctrinally. Secondly, considerit as apromise. And, thirdly,
look upon it as aprecedent ormodel by which we should work.

I. First, then, WE WILL VIEW THE TEXT DOCTRINALLY.

This declaration of Christ contains some most important Doctrines and
the best is this–that it is the office and aim of the Holy Spirit to
glorify Jesus Christ No study in Scripture is more interesting or
profitable to the Christian than the Revelation which is given to us
concerning the Sacred Trinity and the various parts which the Divine
Persons take in the work of our salvation. John Bunyan wrote a notable
work upon the Trinity and the Christian–and nothing could be more
appropriate, for there would be no Christian without the Trinity! It
needs the Father, the Son and the Spirit to produce that noblest kind
of man, a Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ! The various offices of the
blessed Trinity in Unity are usually distinct and clearly defined, yet
they sometimes intertwist and interchange, just as Jesus in our text
bears witness to the Spirit and the Spirit continually bears witness to
the Lord Jesus and glorifies Him. Brothers and Sisters, I pray you will
remember that when the Spirit convicts the world of sin, it is in order
that the convicted sinner may learn the preciousness of that Savior to
whom the Spirit bears witness! When He convicts the world ofjudgment,
it is not only

that the Judge may be honored as He deserves to be, but also that the
way by which judgment may be averted through the substitutionary
Sacrifice of Christ may be made clear to the sinner's mind. And when He
convicts the world of righteousness, what righteousness is it but that
which Jesus Christ has worked out and brought in–that righteousness
alone in which saved sinners are able to appear before God without
spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing? The Holy Spirit always works with
this aim and objective–to lead sinners to admire, adore and trust in
Jesus Christ! His Omnipotence bends itself to this end–that Jesus
Christ may be glorified in the hearts and lives of sinners saved by His
Grace!

I gather from our text another Doctrine, namely, that, any teaching
which does not glorify Jesus Christ is not the teaching of the Holy
Spirit. By this simple test, the humblest among us may be able to judge
even that form of teaching which is most pretentious. And if it cannot
endure this test, it may be rejected without hesitation! The poorest
man who enters any assembly, if he hears a Doctrine that glorifies
Christ, can say, "I may safely listen to this teaching, for the Spirit
of God will set His seal to it." But if, on the other hand, amidst a
blaze of intellectual splendor and a brilliant display of mere human
knowledge, nothing is said that will glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, the
true child of God says to himself, "What business have I to be in this
place? This is not the company that is congenial to me, nor the
teaching to which I ought to give heed. Here is neither the food for my
soul nor yet the opportunity of glorifying my dear Lord and Master! I
will leave this assembly and seek to find some other place where the
Spirit of God is at work in His chosen ministry of glorifying Christ."
Thus the great Doctrine that it is the Spirit's work to glorify Christ
furnishes us with a spiritual detector by which we may discover what is
true gold and what is counterfeit–and by which we may judge whether
the voices that we hear are voices of the night which cry out to us to
follow them in the darkness, or the voices of the dawning which herald
the coming of the day!

There is this further Doctrine in the text, that the Holy Spirit, in
glorifying Christ, acts in sacred concert with the other Persons of the
blessed Trinity, for Jesus said, "He shall receive of Mine." I am not
going to explain this declaration of Christ. I cannot do so, for I do
not, myself, fully understand it. All I can say is that the Holy Spirit
is represented here as receiving the things of Christ. Now the Holy
Spirit is continually spoken of in the Scriptures as Divine and He
certainly is Divine–yet Christ here says that He receives or takes
from the Father the things of Christ that He may show them to us. They
are not His own things–things of His own devising or suggesting–but
those which Christ calls His. So, just as Jesus said that He did not
come in His own name, but in the name of the Father who had sent Him,
so the Spirit of God does not come in His own name, nor come with His
own message–but He receives the things of Christ and shows them to us.
I delight in this sharing of the great work by the glorious Trinity in
Unity! I love to see the Father, Son and Spirit all taking part in the
salvation of the elect! Just as in the Creation, God said, "Let Us make
man in Our image, after Our likeness," and there was a council held to
decide as to that early work, so here it is not merely one of the
Persons of the Trinity, but all Three who are concerned in the greater
work of man's new creation! The Spirit receives from the Father the
things of Christ and so it is as though God said, "Let Us make man new
in Our image, after Our likeness." Father, Son and Spirit work together
in perfecting the new creation–so let us always give undivided and
equal honor to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit–

"Give to the Father praise,

Give glory to the Son,

And to the Spirit of His Grace

Be equal honor done."

Further, I want you to notice that the Holy Spirit, being bent upon
glorifying Christ, glorifies Him with His own things. Jesus says, "He
shall receive of Mine." The Holy Spirit does not go after something
apart from Christ in order to bring glory to Christ–if Christ is to be
glorified, the crown must be made out of His own jewels–and the jewels
must be found in His own mine! So, Beloved, in order to honor Christ,
you must go to Christ–you must find Christ's honors in Christ Himself.
Even the Holy Spirit, who is Omniscient, does not look outside of
Christ in order to find something with which to glorify Him. "He shall
glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine." And none of us can ever
honor Christ by bringing anything to Him. If we want to honor Him, we
must honor Him with that which is already His own. If I want to honor
the Lord Jesus Christ at this moment, how can I do it better than by
preaching of His own Person, His own Manhood, His own Godhead, His own
life, His own death, His own Resurrection, His own Ascension and His
own coming again in the glory of His Father with the holy angels? It
must be with the things of Christ that we honor Christ!

If the Holy Spirit willed to do so, He could bring forth matchless
novelties in honor of Christ, but He does not will to do so. He honors
Christ with that which is Christ's–and if you and I, standing in the
pulpit or anywhere else, want to honor Christ, we must not seek to
excogitate some brilliant thought from our own brain, or come before
our fellows to display the results of our own wonderful culture–the
grand flowers which we have grown in the well-tilled garden of our own
highly educated minds! Oh no–Christ must have His own flowers to smell
if He is to have a sweet and acceptable posy brought to Him! The
ingredients of the incense put into His censer must be all His
own–nothing else will be acceptable to Him. Even in the Song of
Solomon, you remember that when Christ comes into His own garden, He
says, "I have gathered My myrrh with My spice; I have eaten My
honeycomb with My honey; I have drunk My wine with My milk." Nothing
will so glorify Christ as that which is already His own! The Spirit of
God knows this and, therefore, in order to glorify Christ, He takes of
Christ's own things and of nothing else.

Continuing a little further–this view of the Doctrine in the text–I
would remind you that when the Holy Spirit wishes to glorify Christ
with Christ's own things, He presents them to the hearts of
Believers–"He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto you."
Without His Divine assistance, you cannot see it–not because it is not
visible, but because your eyes are too dim to perceive it. The work of
the Spirit of God is to shine upon the beauties of Christ so that we
can see them. And when He does so illuminate them, it is a glorifying
of Christ for us to see those beauties! It is not merely to Christ' s
Glory for us to talk about them–that is another way of glorifying
Him–but if you cannot talk, if you have no gifts of eloquence, notice
this blessed Truth of God and be comforted by it–Christ is glorified
by your seeing His Glory! Suppose that you are so slow of speech that
you cannot even tell your own wife or child what you have seen of the
beauties of Christ, yet the Holy Spirit has glorified Christ when He
has shown those beauties to you. Perhaps you are only a poor servant,
or a humble working man living and laboring in obscurity–or possibly a
young child or a maiden scarcely known beyond your own family circle,
yet believe me–when you see the Lord Jesus Christ in His beauty, as He
is revealed to you by the light of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ is
glorified! It is true that He is glorified when I proclaim His dear
name to the thousands who gather in this House of Prayer, but He is
also glorified in that little bedroom of yours where, perhaps in the
dead of night when you lie awake, you say to yourself, "Precious
Christ, what a dear Savior You are to me!" When you get a fresh view of
Him. When you catch a new ray of light streaming upon His blessed
Countenance and you perceive a few more of those lines of love that are
written there–Jesus Christ is glorified! I think this is part of what
Christ meant when He said to His disciples concerning the Holy Spirit,
"He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it
unto you."

Oh, what a wondrous view of Christ the Holy Spirit sometimes gives us!
As yet, however, I am afraid that very few of us have had more than a
partial view of Him. Have you not sometimes stood upon a hill when it
has been a day of mingled cloud and sunshine and there has been a break
in the clouds–and the sun has shone through and that hill over yonder
has been all ablaze with the golden sunlight–and that part of the
landscape has been marvelously illuminated? All down the valley there
was gloom. But presently the clouds shifted again and then the beams of
light traveled down into the plains and the river flowing below flashed
in the sunlight while the hill was once more enveloped in shade! As the
clouds continued to move, the sunshine kept lighting up different parts
of the landscape. It is just like that with regard to our view of
Christ! The Spirit of God, who is the very perfection of light, shines
upon Christ with a brilliance that the sun never possessed! Sometimes
the Spirit shines upon Christ's Priesthood and oh, what a wonderful
sight it is, then, for us to see Christ offering up Himself as the one
great Sacrifice for sin! Another time it may be that the Spirit shines
especially upon the prophetic Character of Christ and we then admire
Him as revealing God to us and teaching us the Truth! Perhaps the next
day the Spirit shows us Christ's royal Character and then we cry, or
more probably we sing–

"All hail the power of Jesus' name! Let angels prostrate fall! Bring
forth the royal diadem, And crown Him Lord of All! Babes, men and sires
who know His love, Who feel your sin and thrall, Now joy with all the
hosts above And crown Him Lord of All!'

Sometimes a beam of light will shine upon Christ's hands that were
pierced by the nails and then we wonderingly ask, "How could the hands
of the Creator of the universe be thus nailed to the tree for us?" And
soon the Spirit's bright light gleams upon the face of Jesus and we
then–

"See Divine compassion

Floating in His languid eyes"

as He bows His head to death for us. But what will it be if the Holy
Spirit shall be pleased to give us a full view of Christ upon the
Cross? Then will our happy spirits indeed glorify Him and each redeemed
one will softly sing–

"Sweet the moments, rich in blessing,

Which before the Cross I spend.

Life, and health, and peace possessing

From the sinner's dying Friend.

Here I'll sit forever viewing

Mercy's streams, in streams of blood.

Precious drops! My soul bedewing

Plead and claim my peace with God.

Here it is I find my Heaven

While upon the Cross I gaze–

Love I much? I ve more forgiven.

Im a miracle of Grace." Oh, for such a sight of Christ as that, for
thus Jesus is glorified and we are truly blessed!

II. Now secondly, I want to show you that THE TEXT MAY BE VIEWED AS A
PROMISE. He shall–these are three of the blessed "shalls" and "wills"
of Christ–"He shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and
shall show it unto you."

Come, dear child of God, and lay hold of this precious promise of
Christ! If you get the promise of a man and you believe that he is an
honest man, you value his promise. But here you have the promise of
your God and Savior, Jesus Christ, the faithful Promiser, so you may
well prize that! Are you not sometimes the subject of grave doubts as
to whether you really glorify Christ? If so, fall back upon His blessed
promise. The Holy Spirit in you shall glorify Christ, for He shall take
of the things of Christ and shall show them to you. Possibly you fear
that in the days to come, you will bring no glory to Christ. You know
your own feebleness, your lack of talent and your lack of opportunity
for glorifying Christ. You have cried many a time–

"Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing

My great Redeemers praise!

The glories of my God and King

The triumphs of His Grace!"

Yet you grieve that you cannot glorify Him and you are afraid that you
never will be able to do so. Listen to this precious promise again–"He
shall glorify Me: for He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it unto
you," even to you, though you are His poorest, weakest, meanest child!
Though you will not be able to say much about it to others, you will
glorify Christ by looking at Him as He is revealed to you by the Holy
Spirit! We honor the sun as we look at it, or bask in its beams–I do
not know what else we can do to show our appreciation of the sun but
lie in the sunlight and thank God for letting the sun shine upon us. I
have often thought of the lilies and the roses in the garden and of how
they praise the God who made them. Not by singing, as the birds do, nor
by lowing, like the cattle, nor by clapping their hands in joy and
exultation like the trees of the woods do–the lilies and the roses
praise God by just receiving from Him everything that they possess,
drinking in His dew and rain and sunshine and standing there in all
their beauty pouring out the fragrance that He has poured into them!
And that is how you must glorify Christ, my Brothers and Sisters who
are in Him. See Christ as the Spirit shows Him to you! Receive of His
fullness, pour out the Grace that He has poured into you–and you shall
in this way glorify Christ!

Now, Beloved, this promise is being daily fulfilled in all true
Believers. God is being glorified in them by their sight of the Lord
Jesus Christ as He is revealed to them by the Holy Spirit. As they walk
to and from their daily work. As they sit down for a while to read
their Bibles. As they kneel in prayer at their bedsides and are lost in
wonder, love and praise at the Spirit's revelation of the beauties of
Christ, Christ is being glorified by the Holy Spirit in them! Do not
talk to me

of your fine "altars" studded with all manner of precious gems, with
flowers, candles and images thereon. Do not tell me about your grand
cathedrals with all the splendor of their architecture! The best altar
in the world is a broken and a contrite heart and the truest cathedral
is a soul that is rejoicing in the indwelling God! When the Holy Spirit
comes and reveals Christ in the soul, there is the Altar, there is the
Temple, there is the true worship for which God cares beyond all
else–and that is really glorifying Christ!

As this promise is being thus constantly fulfilled, I am sure, Beloved,
that it is most desirable that it should be more and more fulfilled
and, therefore, I exhort you to plead it before God. Say, "Lord, will
You graciously bid the Holy Spirit to glorify Christ in me and to
reveal Christ to me more than He has ever yet done?" As you offer this
prayer, if you really mean it, you will be more earnest than you have
ever been in your meditation concerning Christ, in your searching of
the Word to find out all that you can about Christ and in your
fellowship with Christ. What a man truly prays for, he diligently seeks
after until he obtains it if it really is in accordance with the will
of God. If our minds are entirely occupied with the world, is it at all
likely that the Spirit of God will show the things of Christ to us? We
must give adequate space to the Spirit. We must give Him time and
opportunities–putting other things away from us and placing our souls
before the Spirit in a waiting and expectant attitude! As sensitive
plates are put before that object which they are intended to reproduce,
so let us be placed before the view of Christ which the Spirit of God
desires to reveal to us– then the image of Christ shall be imprinted
upon us and thus He will first be glorified by our seeing Him in the
light that the Spirit sheds upon Him, and then He will be further
glorified by others seeing His likeness reproduced in us!

I think I have clearly shown you that our text is a promise made by
Christ to His disciples. And I have also shown you that it is a promise
which ought to be pleaded at the Throne of Grace, so may I entreat
every Christian here to really plead it? A promise is just like a
check–but a check is of no real value unless it is taken to the bank
and exchanged for cash. You know how we cash our checks–why do we not
take God's promises to Him to have them fulfilled just as readily as we
take man' s promises to the bank to have them fulfilled? I think that a
good many long prayers which some consider very fine things, are merely
exhibitions of uncertainty and unbelief. If I have a check about the
genuineness of which there is some doubt–and I take it to the bank–it
is probable that I shall be delayed some little time while there is a
conversation between the clerks concerning it–a comparison of
signatures, an examination of ledgers and ever so many other things.
But if I have a genuine check about which there is no question
whatever, what is the usual order of procedure? I go to the counter,
put the check down, perhaps scarcely say a word except to indicate how
I will take the change, pick up my sovereigns or bank notes and walk
away! And that is how I like to pray–I ask God for what He has
promised to give me. I believe that He will fulfill His promise and I
go my way feeling sure that I have received that for which I asked! As
a sensible man, when he has received from the bank clerk the change for
his check, puts the money in his pocket and goes about his business, so
should you act towards your God when you pray to Him. Say, "Lord, You
have promised such-and-such a blessing to me. I come to You and plead
Your own promise. And I believe that You will fulfill it to me." At all
events, that is the way that I delight to pray.

You ask me, "Would you not be longer in prayer than that?" No, not on
that one occasion. I shall probably be at the bank with another check,
presently, so I cannot afford to take more time than is necessary with
this one. You can do a great deal of business at this blessed bank if
you do it quickly! But if you waste your time loitering at the counter
and chatting with the clerk, that is not the way to honor the great
Lord of the bank! Some people seem to think that in prayer, they must
go through the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith, or some
similar compendium of Doctrine–but that is not real praying. If,
however, you will do your business with your God just as you would do
your business with your banker, you will be sure to come back to Him
again and again, for there is no man who does so much of this sacred
business of pleading with God as the man who is most successful with
Him! If you have succeeded once in prayer, I guarantee that you will
pray again! And after a second time of successful pleading, you will
pray a third time more easily and more confidently! And God will take
care that you shall have plenty of reasons for praying! Only do make it
real praying. Say, "Lord Jesus, You have said that the Holy Spirit
shall glorify You by taking of Your things and showing them to Your
people. I believe it, Lord. Let me prove it to be true at the Communion
Table tonight! Let me prove it to be true in my private devotions all
through this week! Let me prove it to be true all through this year and
all through my life." Pray thus, and then, according to your faith
shall it be unto you!

III. Now we shall think of the text in the last way which I indicated,
AS A PRECEDENT FOR GLORIFYING CHRIST.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I know that a great number of you who
are now present wish above all things that the Lord Jesus Christ may be
glorified in this world. And I also know that you who have tasted that
the Lord is gracious have this for your highest ambition, that you may,
by some means or other, by sickness or by health, by poverty or by
wealth, by life or by death, bring glory to Him. Very well, then, that
being the case, let this text be a guide to you in your efforts.

In order to glorify Christ, it seems, first, that it will be wisdom on
your part to rely upon the Holy Spirit You say that you want to glorify
Christ–that is also what the Holy Spirit wants to do! That is what He
has long been doing and is still doing–therefore cast in your lot with
Him–get Him to help you do the same work as He is doing. I have
sometimes seen some young fellows rowing upstream, and it has been a
heavy task to them. But there has come along a barge pulled quickly by
horses, or better still, a steam launch, and the young men have called
out to those on board, "Throw us a rope, please!" And then those who
were before toiling in rowing have gone along easily enough. So, when I
see the Spirit of God contending against all opposition–steaming
upstream, as it were–in order to glorify Christ. As I need to go
upstream, too, for the same purpose, I seek to act in connection with
His Omnipotence, so that He may work with me and that I may be drawn
onward and upward by His almighty power! My Sister, do not go to that
Sunday school class of yours again until you have asked the Holy Spirit
to go with you! My Brother, do not go up those pulpit stairs again, nor
even up the stairs of that infirmary where you go visit the sick, or of
that prison where you go to visit the inmates without first saying,
"Spirit of God, it is Your business to glorify Christ and that is also
my business–so will You graciously go with me and go in me? Give me
the right words to utter and the right spirit in which to utter them.
You and I are perfectly agreed in what we are seeking in this matter.
Oh, work by me so that Jesus Christ may be glorified!"

I see also another thing in this precedent, which is that if I want to
glorify Christ, I must first take care to apprehend Him clearly myself
Two of Christ's declarations in the text show me this. The Holy Spirit
does not glorify Christ till first He receives of the things of
Christ–"He shall receive of Mine." And then He does not glorify Christ
in us except by showing the things of Christ to us, so that if you and
I want to glorify Christ, our first objective must be to see Him and to
see His Glory for ourselves. You cannot, I think, do good to others to
any great extent unless you are living in the light of God's
Countenance. The Lord's general rule is first to give the provision
into the disciples hands before those disciples are able to feed the
multitude. Wait awhile, dear Brother, and go to your Lord and say to
Him, "Lord, fill me with Your own fullness, for how can I hope to pour
out to others till You have done so? Show me Yourself, for how can I
describe You to others unless I have Your image very vividly revealed
to my own mind and heart? If I am myself rejoicing in You, then shall I
be able to tell others, with fluent tongue, how gracious You are. If I
hear Your voice giving me a message to deliver from You, then shall I
be able to tell the message with all the greater impressiveness and
power because I received it first from You."

The next point is also clear from the precedent of the text–that is,
in conjunction with the Holy Spirit, having ourselves apprehended
Christ–if we want to glorify Christ, we must tell others about the
things of Christ "You have said that already," says someone. Very well,
then, if I have. I will say it again because I do not know anything
that needs more to be said nowadays than this–that the way for any of
us to glorify Jesus is to show to others the things of Jesus. How many
congregations there are in which the greatest treat to the people would
be a sermon about the Lord Jesus Christ and especially about His
substitutionary Sacrifice! I have heard it said that there are
thousands of sermons preached about the Gospel, but very few in which
there is the Gospel, itself. This will not do! Souls will never be
saved that way! Nobody has ever had his hunger satisfied by hearing a
discourse about bread! It is bread, itself, that is needed to feed the
hungry, so keep on, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, giving the
Bread of Life to starving souls! I know that many call us fools and say
that we are the old stick-in-the-mud Puritans who never get any
further–but never mind, dear Friends, what they say–keep on feeding
the hungry! We do not mean to change our message even if all should
reject it. Here we have stood, these many years, talking to you about
Jesus Christ and Him Crucified–and if anybody heard us 20 years ago
and shall come again now, he will hear just the same message as he
heard then! Why do we not

make progress, as others do? Simply because there is nothing which we
should regard as progress except progressing in the knowledge of this
precious Truth of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified!

In the Infallible Truth of God, which has been revealed by the Holy
Spirit, there is no possibility of progress or advance! He has been
pleased to reveal the whole Truth, so there is nothing more to be
revealed! We can continually search further and deeper into the Truth
that has been revealed, and so may be enabled, by the help of the
Spirit of God, to speak better concerning it, but better Truth we never
shall have and "another Gospel" we never will declare! We should
certainly be "accursed" if we did, for there is but one Gospel–and to
that Gospel we shall remain steadfast, God helping us–even to the end.
Hit that nail on the head again, Brother! Drive it in further and
clinch it on the other side. Stick to the Gospel! It may be a long time
before it wins, but it will win in the long run! Some say that it is
going out of fashion, and that it is at a discount. We were told, the
other day, that Calvinism is almost obsolete, but we do not mind what
men say about it–we believe that it will yet see everything else
obsolete! When modern culture has been blown away, like the thistledown
from the side of the hill, the Gospel I have preached will stand like
the eternal hills, themselves, outliving every opposition, for God
Himself has piled this Truth like a mighty mountain and it shall stand
fast till Christ Himself shall come! Not a jot or tittle of it shall
ever pass away. The Holy Spirit glorifies Christ by taking of the
things of Christ, so let us take care that we follow that precedent and
glorify Christ in the same way!

But with regard to the things of Christ, of course the Holy Spirit
glorifies Christ by explaining them, by showing them to us. So,
Beloved, your business and mine is to make the things of Christ plain
to people as far as we can. Show them to them–turn them first one way
and then another–try and get them to see all of them that there is to
be seen. You have not wasted your time if you have taught one child to
read and understand one verse like this, "The Son of Man is come to
seek and to save that which was lost." You have done something that was
worth doing if you have only whispered into one human ear this short
message, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." In
some way or other, keep on showing to saints and sinners the things of
Christ! That will glorify Christ, somehow or other, both in them that
are saved and in them that perish–and will be a sweet savor unto God
in every place where Christ is made known! Keep on then, my dear fellow
workers, at this blessed work of glorifying Christ!

There are many of you who are doing this under great discouragements,
but I pray you not to leave off doing it. It is the Holy Spirit' s way
to continue this work unceasingly, so let it be your way, also, as long
as you live! But take care that the things which you show to others are
the things which you have really received yourself. You must have
experimental religion, or else you cannot tell of it to others with any
hope that they will accept it. How idle it would be for me to come here
to preach to you of a way of salvation which I had never tried and
proved in my own experience! It would be as foolish as for a sick man
to stand before a company of his fellow patients and recommend to them
a medicine which he had never taken! Do not be guilty of such
inconsistency, dear Friends, but live upon Christ! Get more and more of
Christ into your soul and then you will be able to go and say to
others, "We have found Him of whom Moses and the Prophets did write! We
have found Him whom God has set forth to be the Propitiation for our
sins, the Healer of all our wounds, the Comforter in all our woes."
They will probably say to you, "What do you know about all this?" Then
you will begin to tell how you were broken down on account of sin and
how Jesus met with you in His mercy and saved you with His great
salvation! As you tell the story, they will want to know more and more
about it, for personal narratives are always interesting! And then you
will, by-and-by, see the tears glistening in their eyes as one or
another tremblingly asks, "Would Jesus save me in that way? I wonder if
I went to Him and confessed my sin, whether I, too, would receive
pardon and become a child of God." Then you would seize the golden
opportunity and, laying a loving hand upon his shoulder, you would say,
"Come, dear Friend, let us kneel down and pray together. Let us
together seek that dear Savior who has said, 'Him that comes to Me I
will in no wise cast out.'"

If you are moved to act and speak like that, I cannot tell how often
God the Holy Spirit would glorify Christ by enabling you, first, to
receive the things of Christ, yourself, and then to so show them to
others that they would be moved to say, "We will go with you to the
Cross of Calvary. We will go with you to the sinner's Savior. Where you
were saved, there we, also, will be saved." How I wish that all in this
congregation would make this resolve now through the effectual working
of the ever-blessed Spirit, "Jesus is a great Savior! We will have Him
as our Savior." How I wish that this sacred impulse might come upon all
of us who are now in this building, that we might all be unhappy and
unsatisfied until we found Christ! That is the way for you to glorify
Christ, Sinner–not for you to bring Him any of your own goodness– but
to go to Him and take of His goodness! Not for you to try to make
yourself better, but to come to Him just as you are, and accept Him as
your Savior, to be your Lord and Master forever!

May the Holy Spirit lead you to do so! Do it, blessed Spirit! You love
to glorify Christ–here is Your opportunity in this vast congregation!
Come and work this great work for Jesus' sake! Amen.