The Abiding Comforter 2
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2. But not only at times do you see the truth of God plainly and clearly, but you believe as well as see. There is a divine movement in your soul, whereby your heart is brought under the holy influence and sacred impression of God's truth. As the wax to the seal, as the clay to the potter's hand, so your heart is softened and melted within you, and you receive God's truth stamped upon your heart with a heavenly hand. Does not this show that the Spirit of truth is not only enlightening your understanding, but quickening your conscience, renewing your heart, and spreading a divine influence through your soul? Truth by itself can only stand at the portal, or look in at the window; it cannot come within to regenerate or renew; but the Spirit of truth enters with truth in His mouth, and breathes it into the heart as a living breath, as the prophet saw in "the valley of vision," for until "the breath" came into the slain they did not live (Ezek. 37:10).
3. Under this sacred and spiritual influence there are times and seasons when your conscience seems in an especial manner wrought upon. The evil of sin is set before you as perhaps you have never seen it before. Your conscience bleeds with the guilt and weight of it. You see what a dreadful and an evil thing sin is, how loathsome, how detestable! You could almost weep tears of blood that you have been such a sinner. Your backslidings rise up to view as so many mountains of iniquity. The wickedness of your heart is laid bare, and you feel that there cannot be such another wretch on earth. Your corrupt nature is opened up in all its filth and gore; you wonder how the long suffering of God could have borne with you so many years in the wilderness. And not only so, but tears flow down your cheek; sobs of contrition heave from your breast; you could almost weep your life away, because you have sinned so deeply against such love and against such blood. Why is this? The Spirit of truth is breathing upon your conscience, and the feeling of sin there is His work.
4. Then, again, there are times and seasons when your heart seems in a special manner lifted up to heavenly things. It is as if a live coal from off the altar touched your inmost affections. You see Jesus by the eye of faith at the right hand of the Father; your heart goes out after Him in love and affection; you feel that, be you what you may, you do love Him with every faculty of your soul, and your desire is to live to His praise, and die in the sweet enjoyment of His love shed abroad in your heart. And yet you feel that you never can upon earth love Him as He is to be loved. You must have an immortal tongue to sing His praise, and a glorified soul to hold all that His love can bestow. Why is this? Because the Spirit of truth is love in your affections.
In this way, then, we have the Spirit of truth as light in the understanding, life in the heart, feeling in the conscience, and love in the affections; and by these four things He is made vitally and experimentally known to the saints of God as the Spirit of truth. Can the letter of truth, however clear or sound, do all this? Can a sound creed or a mere form of words effect a work in the least degree approaching to it? I feel sure they cannot, for words as words cannot reach beyond the surface; they cannot sink or penetrate into the very core of the heart's deepest feeling. It is therefore indispensably necessary that the Spirit of truth should put, as it were, a soul into the body of truth, or to speak more correctly, should Himself regenerate, renew and sanctify the saint of God that he may have a living union and communion with the Lord of life and glory; for "he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit," and he becomes this when he is baptized by the Holy Spirit into that spiritual baptism which makes him a living member of the body of Christ.
II. The world cannot receive this Comforter, this Spirit of truth. But I pass on to show how the world thinks, speaks and acts with respect to this promised "Comforter," this "Spirit of truth." The Lord says, "Whom the world cannot receive." Aye, it stands as good now as it stood good then. The world cannot now receive the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, one whit more than it could receive Him then. And why cannot the world receive Him? It is too full of sin and self. If you have a pitcher filled with dirty water, is there room in it for clean water? If a vessel is filled with clay up to the very brim, is there room in it for gold and silver and precious stones? The world is full—full of pride, ignorance, prejudice, self-righteousness, unbelief and selfishness. Then what room is there for the Comforter, the Spirit of truth? "My Word," said the Lord to the Pharisees, "has no place in you." They could not receive it, for their hearts were barred against it.
1. But the Lord Himself gives two reasons why the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth. The first is, "It sees Him not;" the second is, "It knows Him not." The world—that is, the world dead in sin, and the world dead in profession, men generally destitute of the life and power of God—must have something that it can see. It cannot receive that which it sees not. Nature, sense, reason can never go beyond earthly things; thus, while men have no divine faith, they are under the entire influence of their natural minds; and, as heavenly things can only be seen by heavenly eyes, they cannot receive the things which are invisible. Things must be either presented to their natural eye, or be such as their rational understanding can grasp, or they cannot and will not receive them. Now this explains why a religion that presents itself with a degree of beauty and grandeur to the natural eye will always be received by the world, while a spiritual, internal, heartfelt and experimental religion will always be rejected. The world can receive a religion that consists of forms, rites, and ceremonies. These are things seen. Beautiful buildings, painted windows, pealing organs, melodious choirs, the pomp and parade of an earthly priesthood, and a whole apparatus of religious ceremony, carry with them something that the natural eye can see and admire. The world receives all this external worship because suitable to the natural mind and intelligible to the reasoning faculties. But the quiet, inward, experimental, divine religion, which presents no attractions to the outward eye, but is wrought in the heart by a divine operation, the world cannot receive this, because it presents nothing that the natural eye can rest upon with pleasure, or is adapted to gratify the general idea of what religion is or should be.
2. "Neither knows Him." The world knows nothing of divine consolation, because it knows nothing of spiritual grief and sorrow. Hardened in sin, careless in self-righteousness, or steeped up to the lips in an empty profession, what do men care to know about an inward Comforter? Their religion, such as it is, has never cost them an hour's uneasiness or brought their heart down with trouble and distress. If, according to Paul's rule, "as the sufferings of Christ abound, so consolation abounds also by Christ" (2 Cor. 1:5), where there is no suffering, there can be no consolation. Not knowing, then, for themselves anything of the inward consolations of the Spirit, they cannot believe there is such a thing known to the saint of God.
"Fanaticism, enthusiasm, stuff, madness, ridiculous nonsense, bigotry, a bad spirit," any term that can be used, any which comes the easiest to hand, will be launched with many an angry invective against that religion which mainly consists in the love and power of the Holy Spirit. And why? For this reason, because they do not themselves know the consolations bestowed upon the saints of God, nor are they acquainted with the work and witness of the Spirit of truth in their own heart and conscience. Marvel not, then, that worldly professors despise a religion wrought in the soul by the power of God. Be not surprised if even own relatives think you are almost insane when you speak of the consolations of the Spirit or of the teachings of God in your soul. They cannot receive these things, for they have no experience of them, and being such as are altogether opposed to the carnal mind, they reject them with enmity and scorn.
It is surprising that men with the Bible in their hands, and read as it is so much in public and private, should set themselves so desperately against what is so plainly declared therein. Our Lord's own words, if they were not His, would be called by thousands "fanaticism" and "enthusiasm"; for the moment that they are opened up and brought forward as present realities, they arouse a very storm of indignation. Men can read them or bear to hear them read as long as they are 'merely in the Bible'. The 'sword in the sheath' is not dreaded, for it inflicts no wounds; but the naked sword cuts too deeply not to arouse enmity against its keen strokes. It was so when the Lord spoke the words; it is so now when His words in the mouth of His servants have point and edge.
But if the Lord has given to any of you eyes to see and hearts to receive this divine Comforter, praise, bless, and adore your God and Father, and most merciful Benefactor, for His distinguishing grace in giving you to know Him as your Comforter; and if He has ever dropped into your soul any of His sweet teachings, bless Him that you have received Him also as the Spirit of truth into your conscience. What but sovereign grace—rich, free and super-abounding grace—has made the difference between you and them? But for His divine operations upon your soul, you would still be of the world, hardening your heart against everything good and godlike, walking on in the pride and ignorance of unbelief and self-righteousness, until you sank down into the chambers of death.
O, it is a mercy if but one drop of heavenly consolation has ever been distilled into your soul; if ever you have felt or found any relief in your sorrows and distresses from the work and witness of the Holy Spirit; if you have ever gathered any solid comfort from any promise applied with power, from any text dropped into your heart with a sealing testimony, from any manifestation of the love and blood of Christ, or from any communication of liberty, joy, or peace, such as are produced by the operation and influence of the Spirit of God. It may have been but little, nor did it last long, but it has given you a taste of its blessedness, and made you long for another sip, another crumb, another visit.
But look to it well, and examine carefully whether it be real, and whether, weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, you have good ground for believing that what you received with such comfort to your soul was distilled into your heart by the Comforter, and that the truth which you have felt and believed, as well as professed, has been opened up to your conscience by the Spirit of truth. And this leads me to our third point, which is–
III. The difference that the Lord draws between His disciples, and by implication all the saints of God, and the world—"But you know Him." The disciples of the Lord Jesus were very weak and ignorant. They closed their ears to the very last to the Lord's declarations as to His dying the death of the cross. And even when He died before their very eyes, they were as slow to believe in His promised resurrection. Considering the opportunities which they had of daily communion with Him and of instruction from His lips, we are tempted to wonder at their unbelief; and yet, with all their weakness and ignorance, they knew something vitally and experimentally of the Spirit's work upon their hearts.
It may be so with some of you. You may be very weak, very doubting, very fearing, very unbelieving. The natural, deep-seated unbelief of your heart may at times seem to have great power over you, and you may often have reason to say, "I would believe, but cannot." Still you may know, as the disciples knew, something, if not much, of the work of the Comforter, and something, if not much, of the teaching of the Spirit of truth. The Lord assured His disciples that there was a wide and fundamental difference between them and the world. "But you know Him." May I say the same to you: "You know Him"? But if so, may I not further ask: What has that Comforter done for you as a Comforter? What has that Spirit of truth revealed and made manifest to you as the Spirit of truth? Let us examine for a few moments how He is made known to the family of God, and what He does by His power and grace in their heart and conscience.
1. First, He convinces of sin; that is His special office. He, opens up the law, discovers the curse attached to it, makes the soul feel its spirituality, its breadth, and length, and condemning authority. Do you know this Spirit as a Spirit of conviction in having convinced you of sin? Has He ever laid guilt upon your conscience by opening up the law, and condemning you as a transgressor against it, so that you have put your mouth in the dust and confessed you were guilty before God? If you have felt conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit, you know Him; if not as a Comforter, yet as preparing the way for comfort. You know Him in His killing, if not in His reviving; in His bringing down, if not in His raising up; in His discovering sin, if not in revealing salvation.
2. But He is known also as a Spirit of grace and of supplication. When the Lord is pleased to awaken the soul by His Spirit and grace, He gives Him as 'an internal intercessor' to intercede "with groanings that cannot be uttered." Was that ever given to you, so that upon your bended knees you besought the Lord with that earnestness, that sincerity, that pouring out of the heart before Him, with all that simplicity and brokenness, with those tears and sighs, which mark and manifest His internal intercession, and distinguish it from mere formal prayer? If so, you have received Him as a Spirit of grace and of supplications; you "know Him."
3. But has He ever dropped an encouraging word into your heart? As you have sat to hear me or any other minister opening up the work of grace upon the soul, exalting the Lord the Lamb, speaking of His blood and righteousness, tracing out the sacred work of God upon the conscience, have you felt an internal testimony that these things you know for yourself in the depths of your own heart? Then you know Him, for it is He who has given you this encouraging testimony; it is He who blessed the Word with a witnessing power to your conscience.
4. Or have you ever had a revelation of Christ to your soul? Did you ever see Him by the eye of faith at the right hand of God? This can only be by the testimony of the Spirit, for it is His covenant office to take of the things of Christ and to reveal them to the soul. He glorifies Christ by manifesting Him. If you have seen Christ by the eye of faith, if you have had a manifestation of the Son of God and a revelation of Him with power to your soul, "you know Him," because it is He who gave you that most blessed manifestation, such as eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man.
5. Has Jesus ever been made precious to your heart? Did you ever hold Him, as it were, in the arms of faith, as a mother clasps her babe to her bosom, and love Him with a pure heart fervently? Who kindled that love? Who touched your heart with that sacred flame? The Comforter, the Spirit of truth. Then you know Him; for "the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit."
6. Have you ever experienced any of that spirituality of mind which is life and peace, any lifting up of your affections to things above, where Jesus sits at God's right hand, so that you felt that earth was no place for you; the things of time and sense you could tread under your feet; and your heart was so taken up with the blessed things of eternity, that they became the very element in which your soul could bathe, the only happiness you knew below? Then "you know Him," because it was He, and He alone, who lifted up your heart and affections to these heavenly things.
7. Do you love the people of God? Can you say, with all your darkness, and doubt, and fear, that you do love the image of Christ which you see in His people? that taking away all other evidences, this seems still to you so plain that you cannot deny it, and Satan cannot beat you out of it, that you do love those who love Jesus? Whence comes this love? From the Spirit of truth and love, who alone can enable us to love the saints as we love the Savior, to love the members as we love the Head. Then "you know Him."
8. Has any deliverance ever come to you from the power of temptation? Have you had any manifestation of the sufferings of the Lord of life and glory; any solemn, heart-melting views of the garden of Gethsemane; any standing at the cross of Calvary; any view by the eye of faith of the blood that fell from the Redeemer's sacred brow as filled with sorrow in the garden, or crowned with thorns upon the cross; any sympathy, any union, any fellow-feeling with the Man of Sorrows? Whence came this? By the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter. Then "you know Him."
9. Has your heart ever felt true repentance for sin, any godly sorrow, any forsaking of your bosom lusts, any breaking to pieces of your fondest idols, any loosening of earthly ties, any willingness to crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts? The Spirit of truth alone can accomplish this. Then "you know Him."
10. Has the fear of death ever been removed? Did you ever look that gaunt 'king of terrors' in the face? Did you ever look beyond the narrow isthmus of time and the dark and dreary river which flows between you and eternity, and believe that when death came it would be a messenger from the Lord to take your soul into His bosom? Has the Lord ever been made so dear, near, and precious that you have felt as if you could gladly drop the body and mount on eagle's wings from earth to heaven? Then "you know Him"; for who but He could deliver you from the fear of death, and make you, instead of shrinking from him with terror, even welcome the last enemy as your best friend? To have felt this, is it not to have known the Spirit as the Comforter?
And oh what a blessing it is also to have received the same gracious and heavenly Teacher as the Spirit of truth! If this is your happy case, you know the truth for yourself, and the truth is dear to your soul; it has been ingrafted by a divine witness in your heart, and inlaid by the power of God in your conscience. The truth as it is in Jesus is very, very precious to you. You cannot part with it; it is your very life. Sooner than part with God's truth and your interest therein, you would be willing in favored moments to lay down your life itself.
But what makes you love God's truth? What has given you a heart to embrace and delight in it; and when you have come to the house of prayer, it may be with a fainting body and a troubled mind, has yet supported your weary steps and brought you in; or when you have gone home from hearing the Word, has cheered your heart in the dark and gloomy night as you have lain upon your bed, and drawn your affections up to the Lord Jesus Christ? The Comforter, the Spirit of truth. He, and He alone, could give it so firm and enduring a place in your heart, conscience, and affections.
Then live that truth, as well as love it, and proclaim its power and efficacy in your life and conversation. If the Spirit has written His truth upon your heart, He will bring forth that truth in your lips and in your life. He will make it manifest that you are "children that cannot lie." You will show forth the power of truth, in the sincerity of your speech, in the uprightness of your movements, in your family, in the church, in your business, in your general character and deportment, and in everything which stamps the reality of religion and the power of vital godliness.
IV. I now pass on to our last point, which is the reason why His people know Him, and the promise the Lord gives: "He dwells with you, and shall be in you."
That holy Comforter and most gracious Spirit does not take up a 'temporary' abode in the heart of the Lord's people. Where He once takes up His dwelling, there He forever dwells and lives. "He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with youforever." Oh the blessing! Where once that holy Dove has lighted, there that Dove abides. He does not visit the soul with His grace, and then leave it to perish under the wrath of God, or allow His work to wither, droop and die. But where He has once come into the soul with power, there He fixes His continual habitation, for He makes the bodies of the saints His temple. He consecrates them to the service of God. He takes up His dwelling in their heart; there He lives, there He moves, there He works, and sanctifies body and soul to the honor and glory of the Lord God Almighty.
But I think I can almost hear you say, "I believe it to be true; but how can He be in my heart when I am often so cold and lifeless; when I seem to be at times so exposed to the working of every sin, and subject to every vanity and temptation? How can this Comforter, the Spirit of truth, dwell with me, and I be what I am?" He may still be in you, and you may not be able, at all times and under all circumstances, to recognize His presence. He dwells in your heart, and yet sometimes He dwells out of sight and almost out of life.
Do not forget that you still have a carnal mind, which is "enmity against God." Remember that "the flesh still lusts against the Spirit as well as the Spirit against the flesh, and that these two are contrary the one to the other." Believe the Lord's Word, which cannot lie, and not the reasonings and workings of your own unbelieving heart. Take this, then, as a most certain truth, that He forever abides with that soul which He has once visited. For oh, what would be the consequences of His deserting it? Satan would enter in to fill it with his horrid blasphemies and wickedness, and the last state of that man would be worse than the first. No; the indwelling of the Spirit is needful to keep out the incoming of Satan; the indwelling of life to keep out death; the indwelling of holiness to keep out sin; the indwelling of the work and witness of the Holy Spirit to keep back the waves that would deluge the soul and the billows that would sweep it into a never-ending hell.
Therefore, blessed be the word that the Lord has spoken: "He dwells with you, and shall be in you." Yes, He shall be in you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. If He has begun His work, He will carry it on and bring it to completion. If He has once blessed you, He will bless you again. He will never leave the soul to which He has ever made known the glory of God, but He will bring you, who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, to those glorious and blissful mansions "where tears are wiped off all faces," and where you will see the Son of God as He is, be conformed to His image, and enjoy His ravishing presence to all eternity.
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