O God, thou Judge of all, my spirit meets thee robed in my Saviour's righteousness, and salutes thee as my Father and my all. The apostle then turns to a third source of comfort, namely, the abiding of the Holy Spirit in and with the Lord's people. They seek in vain; for there is no Saviour to be found, except at Calvary; and after you have made the circuit of the globe, and compassed heaven and hell to find another way of salvation, you will have to come back to Christ. Hear me, what remarkably beautiful language he used in prayer!" O Christian, thou canst not be condemned, for Christ has paid the debt. So the Spirit confirms the witness of my spirit that I am born of God. 13 For if you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.. But we sit down very contented. You read your Bible in early youth, and you went astray with a vengeance; for when you sinned, you knew that you were sinning, and yet you transgressed." So must we be, for we shall be made like him. What a debtor thou art to Divine Sovereignty! This he does by arousing our desires. I hear a note of holy praise; alas! Another will say, "Ah, it is an insidious disease that will soon carry me to my grave!" To God's cause you are debtors. for who hath resisted his will? Remember, it is not the one thing alone that is for your good; it is the one thing put with another thing, and that with a third, and that with a fourth, and all these mixed together, that work for your good. Now, suppose I should put the following question to any converted man in this hall. Last of all, I have another practical point. My hands have never been stained with the blood of any man." Are you intelligently persuaded not only that God is love, but that God loves you? If there be some points in the covenant of grace where wisdom has been deficient, and therefore by error it may miscarry, or by lack of legal right may prove null and void, it is as surely null towards Christ as towards ourselves, for he is jointly concerned therein. Thus have I tried to set forth the cheering fact that the Spirit helps the people of God. They work, in opposition to idleness. When Paul had alluded to that consoling subject he turned to the next ground of comfort namely, that we are to be sustained under present trial by hope. Oh! It is naught but "Look!" Some men groan after wealth, they worship Mammon. You see, my dear hearers, if it were possible for the work of grace in your souls to be of no avail, nothing more could be done for you. Christ was in his death the hostage of the people of God. Why call him? The tall archangel before the throne is not called God's Son, he is one of the most favoured of his servants, but not his child. Vain man would be wise; he would break the seven seals thereof, and read the mysteries of eternity. Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles." Yes, say we, we have many corruptions. When we consider what man once was, only second to the angels, the companion of God, who walked with him in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day; when we think of him as being made in the very image of his Creator, pure, spotless, and unblemished, we cannot but feel bitterly grieved to find such an accusation as this preferred against us as a race. When at any time then the Holy Spirit comforts you sheds a sweet calm over your disturbed spirit; when at any period he instructs you, opens to you a mystery you did not understand before; when at some special period he inspires you with an unwonted affection, an unusual faith in Christ; when you experience a hatred of sin, a faith in Jesus, a death to the world, and a life to God, these are the works of the Spirit. The first is, that this body of ours is not delivered. Can you not do it? PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON Romans 8:14-39 . Absurd! Though the sins of the whole world should press on any one of these sacred columns, it would never break nor bend. In the spiritual body, some are fitted for and called to one sort of work; others for another sort of work. And the heart, when we perceive not its ebullitions, when it belches not forth its lava, and sendeth not forth the hot stones of its corruption, is still the same dread volcano. He has to intercede with his Father, and mark, with our Father too. 3. Expect not, O Christian, that all things will work together to make thee rich; it is just possible they may all work to make thee poor. He to whom all these things are but as nothing, gives himself up to the inheritance of his people. Oh! When we know the matter of prayer, we yet fail to pray in a right manner. I served the world, he would not, in mine age. "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Now election shuts up the precious treasury of God's covenant blessings for his children for penitents, for seeking sinners. The work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian's behalf is described in the first 27 verses of this chapter. it is a glorious truth. I have known what it is to feel as if I could not pray about a certain matter, and yet I have been obliged to groan about it. Blessed is the man to whom this reasoning is not abstract, but experimental. Our sighs are sacred things; these griefs and sighs are too hallowed for us to tell abroad in the streets. This is something more than helping us to pray, something more than encouraging us or directing us, but I venture no further, except to say that he puts such force of his own mind into our poor weak thoughts and desires and hopes, that he himself maketh intercession for us, working in us to will and to pray according to his good pleasure. He who giveth the most light to the world, will always be able to discover his own darkness. I do not think it always for my good to increase in treasure, but I know it is good to grow in grace. I think I need not remind you of your condition here below; you are too conversant with it, being hourly fretted with troubles, vexed with your own infirmities, with the temptations of Satan, and with all the allurements of this world. On the cross I see Jesus dying for my sins as an expiating sacrifice; but in the resurrection I see God acknowledging the death of Christ, and accepting what he has done for my indisputable justification. I want you, dear friends, to get this persuasion into you. They are waiting till their Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the trump of the archangel, and the voice of God; then shall their bodies rise, then shall the world be judged; then shall the righteous be divided from the wicked; and then, upstreaming in marvellous procession, leading captivity captive for the last time, the Prince at their head, the whole of the blood-washed host, wearing their white robes, and bearing their palms of victory, shall march up to their crowns and to their thrones, to reign for ever and ever! and secondly, how ought it to affect us? And may the love of Jesus be with you. "It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again." Oh! Let her, then, as Christ's queen, claim the earth as hers, and send her heralds forth from sea to sea to bid all men bow before him, and confess him to be their King. "You know how you used to blaspheme his name." He said within himself, "Does Jesus love me? You were murmuring at the dispensations of God. "THE SWORD AND THE TROWEL." This day, if we do not break fish and barley loaves, we bring you better food; this day, if we cannot give to men opened eyes and unstopped ears, yet in the teaching of the gospel of Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, the mental eye is cleansed, and the soul's ear also is purged; so that in every child of God, in proportion as he labors in the power of the Spirit for Christ, the works which he does bear witness of him that he is the son of God. I knew there was a work; I knew I prayed, and cried, and groaned for mercy, but I did not know that was the Lord's work; I half thought it was my own. II. "How art thou fallen from heaven, thou son of the morning!" Listen at that door on the left, there is a deep, hollow, awful groan. What contrasts we have in the seventh verse! Yet there is the church, and how can she in the slightest degree incur condemnation, when she is already at the right hand of the Father with her covenant head. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied, and ye who long for his appearing shall be satisfied also when ye wake up in his likeness. I believe that there have been some professors, such as Judas and Simon Magus, who have come very near to this condition, and others who are said, after a certain sort, to have believed, to have received the Holy Spirit in miraculous gifts, and to have been specially enlightened so as to have been able to teach others; but the work of grace did not affect their hearts, it did not renew their natures, it did not transform their spirits, and so it was impossible to renew them to repentance. Having received something, we desire more. Look at our history. If, at your leisure, you read through the fifth chapter of this epistle to the Romans, you will there very readily discover that the apostle proves, that if Christ's death be an argument for our salvation, his life is a still greater one. There is a publican living in it, who is a hard, griping, grasping, miserly extortioner. Is not the wretch smitten dead? Now, farewell to such of you as are debtors in that sense; but just one word to those who are debtors in the other sense; Sinner, thou who owest to God's justice, thou who hast never been pardoned; what wilt thou do when pay-day comes/ My friend over there, you who have run up a score of black sins, what will you do when pay-day comes, and no Christ to pay your debts for you? Waiting implies being ready. Creation glows with a thousand beauties, even in its present fallen condition; yet clearly enough it is not as when it came from the Maker's hand the slime of the serpent is on it all this is not the world which God pronounced to be "very good." I can see that part of the chain, which is named "calling," but blessed be God, that is joined to the side that is called "election," and I may be also quite clear that it is joined on to the other side, the glorious end of "glorification." Calvin, John; . "We," says the apostle again and he puts his hand upon his poor distressed brethren he looks at his companions in the prisonhouse at Rome; he looks at that humble band of teachers in Rome, in Philippi, in all the different parts of Asia, and he says, "We!" Romans 8:3-4. Intended for Reading on Lord's-Day, November 22, 1896. Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, April 11th, 1880, by. I have certain experiences and feelings; turning to the Word, I find similar experiences and feelings recorded; and so I prove that I am right, and the Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am born of God. If you are living in sin, you are not called; if you can still continue as you were before your pretended conversion, then it is no conversion at all; that man who is called in his drunkenness, will forsake his drunkenness; men may be called in the midst of sin, but they will not continue in it any longer. It would not have been consistent with his justice for him to pass by my sin. And men of every kindred, and of every tribe, shall see in the face of every man, a relative allied to them by ties of blood. I think he does, and this, then, is our comfort, that, if we have to meet the arch-fiend himself foot to foot in terrible duel, and we may, for men of God have had so to meet him, and he that does battle with the adversary will gain nothing by it but sweat of blood and aching heart, even if he shall win the victory, so that we may well pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one," still we have this comfort, that even though he may rejoice over us for a moment, and may cast us down, he cannot separate us from the love of Christ; he may open many of our veins, and make us bleed even to utter weakness, but the life-vein he can never touch. Jehovah has declared that he will be a father unto us, and that we shall be his sons and his daughters. God is angry with them, and they know it. His righteousness becomes our beauty. The Spirit saith Come, and the bride saith Come not the bride on earth only, but the bride in heaven saith the same, bidding the happy day speed on when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Now, I speak with bated breath. ", Observe then, first of all, the universality of this as to all persons. If any man will contradict that flatly well, be it so. Rather judge that such prayers are like Jabez, of whom it is written, that "he was more honourable than his brethren, because his mother bare him with sorrow." Another text. But what is the conflagration of a distant planet, what is the destruction of the mere material of the most ponderous orb, compared with this fall of humanity, this wreck of all that is holy and sacred in ourselves? It is to the praise of his enemy. Moreover, Christ wrought miracles of mercy towards men, which proved him to be the Son of God. "Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? That is quite another doctrine, and it is the true teaching of the Word of God. Whatever mind may properly be called carnal, not having been spiritualized by the power of God's Holy Ghost, is "enmity against God. And now I come to my last point, upon which briefly but I hope interestingly. The man is perfectly safe, and quite content, so far as that goes, and exceedingly grateful to think that he has been rescued; but yet I hear him groan because he has a wife and children down in yonder plain, and the snow is lying too deep for travelling, and the wind is howling, and the blinding snow flakes are falling so thickly that he cannot pursue his journey. Thus my ill knowledge is met by the great and heavenly knowledge with which he went about the work of offering a complete atonement in my place and stead. Happy is he who can follow the apostle step by step, and say, "Yes, I have this morning the spirit of a son; I know that my heart loves God, and I look to him as my Father, with trust, with confidence, and with love; then I am surely his son, because I have the Spirit a son; then I am his heir; I am the heir of God; and thus my faith lays hold upon the thrice-precious words of this glorious text I am joint heir with Christ.". Romans 8:22-23 . Old Testament or Considerable Portions Thereof. Some of them who were rather heavy and sad of spirit in their days of health have grown joyous and glad as they have neared the eternal kingdom. This is called "the first-fruits of the Spirit," by which I understand the first works of the Spirit in our souls. Yet one more remark before we leave this point. He just repeated his master's name and office as many times as the other gentleman had titles. Now, he never would sit if the work were not fully done. I do not wish for anything more than I have here, I am perfectly satisfied, so far as this goes, but I long to look upon my household, and to be once more in my own sweet home, and until I reach it, I shall not cease to groan." If I may be allowed the simile, I would say that this represents in part the work of the Spirit of God in us, suggesting to us the right desire, and bringing all things to our remembrance whatsoever Christ has told us. Ah! Good men are labouring, at least with usual zeal, and bad men are strenuously plying their craft of evil. Our Lord Jesus Christ will say, in the judgment, concerning certain persons, "I never knew you," yet in a sense he knew them, for he knows every man; he knows the wicked as well as the righteous; but there the meaning is, "I never knew you in such a respect as to feel any complacency in you or any favor towards you." And mark, every man that is saved, is always saved by an overcoming call which he cannot withstand; he may resist it for a time, but he cannot resist so as to overcome it, he must give way, he must yield when God speaks. It is one of the ever-blessed exhibitions of the infinite love of God which without any cause in us, has set itself upon us. Go to the next house, and hear another groan. We have faith, that priceless, precious jewel. (Who would wish that they should? O how much we owe them. "You have robbed God of his glory," another voice seems to say. I have been saved from the snow. Yes, he quickens sinners into spiritual life, and he strives with them to overcome their sinfulness and turn them into the right way; but in the saints he works with us and enables us to pray after his mind and according to the will of God. 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