Honey in the Mouth!

Scripture: John 16:14-15
“He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto
you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall
take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”— John xvi. 14, 15.
 
BELOVED friends, here you have the Trinity, and there is no salvation
apart from the Trinity. It must be the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. “All things that the Father hath are mine”, saith Christ, and the
Father hath all things. They were always his; they are still his; they
always will be his; and they cannot become ours till they change
ownership, till Christ can say, “All things that the Father hath are mine”;
for it is by virtue of the representative character of Christ standing as the
surety of the covenant that the “all things” of the Father are passed over
to the Son, that they might be passed over to us. “It pleased the Father
that in him should all fulness dwell; and of his fulness have all we
received.” But yet we are so dull that, though the conduit-pipe is laid on
to the great fountain, we cannot get at it. We are lame; we cannot reach
thereto; and in comes the third Person of the divine unity, even the Holy
Spirit, and he receives of the things of Christ, and then delivers them
over to us. So we do actually receive, through Jesus Christ, by the Spirit,
what is in the Father.
     Ralph Erskine, in his preface to a sermon upon the fifteenth verse,
has a notable piece. He speaks of grace as honey— honey for the
cheering of the saints, for the sweetening of their mouths and hearts; but
he says that in the Father “the honey is in the flower, which is at such a
distance from us that we could never extract it.” In the Son “the honey is
in the comb, prepared for us in our Immanuel, God-Man, Redeemer, the
Word that was made flesh, saying, ‘All things that the Father hath are
mine; and mine for your use and behoof’: it is in the comb. But then,
next, we have honey in the mouth; the Spirit taking all things, and
making application thereof, by showing them unto us, and making us to
eat and drink with Christ, and share of these ‘all things’; yea, not only
eat the honey, but the honeycomb with the honey; not only his benefits,
but himself.” It is a very beautiful division of the subject. Honey in the
flower in God, as in mystery; really there. There never will be any more
honey than there is in the flower. There it is. But how shall you and I get
at it? We have not wisdom to extract the sweetness. We are not as the
bees that are able to find it out. It is bee-honey, but not man-honey. Yet
you see in Christ it becomes the honey in the honeycomb, and hence he
is sweet to our taste as honey dropping from the comb. Sometimes we
are so faint that we cannot reach out a hand to grasp that honeycomb;
and, alas! there was a time when our palates were so depraved that we
preferred bitter things, and thought them sweet. But now the Holy Ghost
has come, we have got the honey in the mouth, and the taste that enjoys
it; yea, we have now so long enjoyed it, that the honey of grace has
entered into our constitution, and we have become sweet unto God; his
sweetness having been conveyed by this strange method unto us.
     Beloved friends, I scarcely need say to you, do keep the existence of
the Trinity prominent in your ministry. Remember, you cannot pray
without the Trinity. If the full work of salvation requires a Trinity, so
does that very breath by which we live. You cannot draw near to the
Father except through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit. There is a trinity
in nature undoubtedly. There certainly constantly turns up the need of a
Trinity in the realm of grace; and when we get to heaven we shall
understand, perhaps, more fully what is meant by the Trinity in unity.
But if that is a thing never to be understood, we shall at least apprehend
it more lovingly; and we shall rejoice more completely as the three tones
of our music shall rise up in perfect harmony unto HIM who is one and
indivisible, and yet is three, for ever blessed, Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, one God.
     Now for the point which I am to open up to you this morning; though
I cannot do it, but he must do it. We must sit here, and have the text
acted out upon ourselves. “He shall glorify me. He shall take of mine,
and shall shew it unto you.” May it be so just now!
     First, what the Holy Spirit does: “He shall take of mine, and shall
shew it unto you.” Secondly, what the Holy Spirit aims at and really
effects: “He shall glorify me.” And then, thirdly, how in doing both
these things he is the Comforter. It is the Comforter that does this; and
we shall find our richest, surest comfort in this work of the Holy Spirit,
who shall take of the things of Christ, and show them unto us.
     I. First, WHAT THE HOLY SPIRIT DOES. It is clear, beloved
friends, that the Holy Spirit deals with the things of Christ. As our
brother, Archibald Brown, said, when expounding the chapter just now,
he does not aim at any originality. He deals with the things of Christ. All
things that Christ had heard from his Father he made known to us. He
kept to them. And now the Spirit takes of the things of Christ, and of
nothing else. Do not let us strain at anything new. The Holy Ghost could
deal with anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath — the story
of the ages past, the story of the ages to come, the inward secrets of the
earth, the evolution of all things, if there be an evolution. He could do it
all. Like the Master, he could handle any topic he chose; but he confines
himself to the things of Christ, and therein finds unutterable liberty and
boundless freedom.
     Do you think, dear friend, that you can be wiser than the Holy Spirit?
And if his choice must be a wise one, will yours be a wise one if you
begin to take of the things of something or somebody else? You will
have the Holy Spirit near you when you are receiving of the things of
Christ; but, as the Holy Spirit is said never to receive anything else,
when you are handling other things on the Sabbath-day, you will be
handling them alone; and the pulpit is a dreary solitude, even in the
midst of a crowd, if the Holy Ghost is not with you there. You may, if
you please, excogitate a theology out of your own vast brain; but the
Holy Ghost is not with you there. And, mark you! there are some of us
that are resolved to tarry with the things of Christ, and keep on dealing
with them as far as he enables us to do so; and we feel that we are in
such blessed company with the divine Spirit, that we do not envy you
that wider range of thought, if you prefer it.
     The Holy Spirit still exists, and works, and teaches in the church; but
we have a test by which to know whether what people claim to be
revelation is revelation or not: “He shall receive of mine.” The Holy
Ghost will never go farther than the cross, and the coming of the Lord.
He will go no farther than that which concerns Christ. “He shall receive
of mine.” When, therefore, anybody whispers in my ear that there has
been revealed to him this or that, which I do not find in the teaching of
Christ and his apostles, I tell him that we must be taught by the Holy
Spirit. His one vocation is to deal with the things of Christ. If we do not
remember this, we may be carried away by vagaries, as many have been.
Those who will have to do with other things, let them; but as for us, we
shall be satisfied to confine our thoughts and our teaching within these
limitless limits: “He shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”
     I like to think of the Holy Spirit handling such things. They seem so
worthy of him. Now has he got among the hills. Now is his mighty mind
among the infinities when he has to deal with Christ, for Christ is the
Infinite veiled in the finite. Why, he seems something more than infinite
when he gets into the finite; and the Christ of Bethlehem is less to be
understood than the Christ of the Father’s bosom. He seems, if it were
possible, to have out-infinited the infinite, and the Spirit of God has
themes here worthy of his vast nature.
     When you have been the whole Sunday morning whittling away a
text to the small end of nothing, what have you done? A king spent a
day in trying to make a portrait on a cherry-stone— a king, who was
ruling empires; and here is a minister, who professes to have been called
of the Holy Ghost to the employ of taking of the things of Christ, who
spent a whole morning with precious souls, who were dying while he
spoke to them, in handling a theme concerning which it did not signify
the turn of a hair whether it was so or not. Oh, imitate the Holy Spirit! If
you profess to have him dwelling in you, be moved by him. Let it be
said of you in your measure, as of the Holy Ghost without measure, “He
shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”
     But, next, what does the Holy Ghost do? Why, he deals with feeble
men, yea, he dwells with us poor creatures. I can understand the Holy
Ghost taking the things of Christ, and rejoicing therein; but the marvel
is, that he should glorify Christ by coming and showing these things to
us. And yet, brethren, it is among us that Christ is to get his glory. Our
eyes must see him. An unseen Christ is little glorious; and the things of
Christ unknown, the things of Christ untasted and unloved, seem to have
lost their brilliance to a high degree. The Holy Spirit” therefore, feeling
that to show a sinner the salvation of Christ glorifies him, spends his
time, and has been spending these centuries, in taking of the things of
Christ, and showing them to us. Ah! it is a great condescension on his
part to show them to us; but it is a miracle, too. If it were reported that
suddenly stones had life, and hills had eyes, and trees had ears, it would
be a strange thing; but for us who were dead and blind and deaf in an
awful sense — for the spiritual is more emphatic than the natural—for
us to be so far gone, and for the Holy Ghost to be able to show the
things of Christ to us, is to his honour. But he does do it. He comes from
heaven to dwell with us. Let us honour and bless his name.
     I never could make up my mind which to admire most as an act of
condescension; the incarnation of Christ, or the indwelling of the Holy
Ghost. The incarnation of Christ is marvellous— that he should dwell in
human nature; but, observe, the Holy Ghost dwells in human nature in
its sinfulness; not in perfect human nature, but in imperfect human
nature; and he continues to dwell, not in one body, which was fashioned
strangely for himself, and was pure and without taint; but he dwells in
our body. Know ye not that they are the temples of the Holy Ghost,
which were defiled by nature, and in which a measure of defilement still
remains, despite his indwelling? And this he has done these multitudes
of years, not in one instance, nor in thousands of instances only, but in a
number that no man can number. He continues still to come into contact
with sinful humanity. Not to the angels, nor to the seraphim, nor to the
cherubim, nor to the host who have washed their robes, and made them
white in the blood of the Lamb, does he show the things of Christ; but
he shall show them unto us.
     I suppose that it means this, that he takes of the words of our Lord—
those which he spoke personally, and by his apostles. Let us never allow
anybody to divide between the word of the apostles and the word of
Christ. Our Saviour has joined them together. “Neither pray I for these
alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.”
And if any begin rejecting the apostolic word, they will be outside the
number for whom Christ prays; they shut themselves out by that very
fact. I wish that they would solemnly recollect that the word of the
apostles is the word of Christ. He tarried not long enough, after he had
risen from the dead, to give us a further exposition of his mind and will;
and he could not have given it before his death, because it would have
been unsuitable. “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot
bear them now.” After the descent of the Holy Ghost, the disciples were
prepared to receive that which Christ spoke by his servants Paul and
Peter, and James and John. Certain doctrines which we are sometimes
taunted about as being not revealed by Christ, but by his apostles, were
all revealed by Christ, every one of them. They can all be found in his
teaching; but they are very much in the parabolic form. It is after he has
gone up into glory, and has prepared a people by his Spirit to understand
the truth more fully, that he sends his apostles, and says, “Go forth, and
open up to those whom I have chosen out of the world the meaning of
all I said.” The meaning is all there, just as all the New Testament is in
the Old; and sometimes I have thought that, instead of the Old being less
inspired than the New, it is more inspired. Things are packed away more
tightly in the Old Testament than in the New, if possible. There are
worlds of meaning in one pregnant line in the Old Testament; and in
Christ’s words it is just so. He is the Old Testament to which the
Epistles come in as a kind of New Testament; but they are all one and
indivisible; they cannot be separated.
     Well, now, the words of the Lord Jesus, and the words of his
apostles, are to be expounded to us by the Holy Spirit. We shall never
get at the centre of their meaning apart from his teaching. We shall
never get at their meaning at all, if we begin disputing about the words,
saying, “Now, I cannot accept the words.” If you will not have the shell,
you will never have the chick. It is impossible. “The words are not
inspired,” they say. Here is a man in the witness-box, and he has sworn
to speak the truth, and he says that he has done so; and now he is cross-
examined, and he says, “Now, I have spoken the truth, but I do not stand
by my words.” The cross-examining lawyer has got hold of a certain
statement of his. The witness says, “Oh, I do not swear to the words, you
know.” The question is asked, “What, then, do you swear to? There is
nothing else. We do not know anything about your meaning. All that
you have sworn to must be your words.” But what the fellow means is
this, that he is a liar; he is a perjurer. Well, I say no more than common-
sense would suggest to you if you were sitting in a court. Now, if a man
says, “I have spoken the truth, but still I do not swear to the words;”
what is there left? If we have no inspiration in the words, we have got an
impalpable inspiration that oozes away between your fingers, and leaves
nothing behind.
     Well, take the words, and never dispute over them. Still, into their
soul-fulness of meaning you cannot come until the Holy Ghost shall lead
you into them. They that wrote them for you did not fully understand
what they wrote in many instances. There were some of them who
enquired and searched diligently to know what manner of things those
were whereof the Holy Ghost had spoken to them, and of which he had
made them speak. And you to whom the words come will have to do the
same. You must go and say, “Great Master, we thank thee for the Book
with all our hearts; and we thank thee for putting the Book into words;
but now, good Master, we will not cavil over the letter, as did the Jews
and the rabbis and the scribes of old, and so miss thy meaning. Open
wide the door of the words, that we may enter into the secret closet of
the meaning; and teach us this, we pray thee. Thou hast the key. Lead us
in.”
     Dear friends, whenever you want to understand a text of Scripture,
try to read the original. Consult anybody who has studied what the
original means; but remember that the quickest way into a text is
praying in the Holy Ghost. Pray the chapter over. I do not hesitate to say
that, if a chapter is read upon one’s knees, looking up at every word to
him that gave it, the meaning will come to you with infinitely more light
than by any other method of studying it. “He shall glorify me: for he
shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.” He shall re-deliver the
Master’s message to you in the fulness of its meaning.
     But I do not think that is all that the text means. “He shall receive of
mine.” In the next verse the Lord goes on to say, “All things that the
Father hath are mine.” I do think that it means, therefore, that the Holy
Spirit will show us the things of Christ. Here is a text for us — “The
things of Christ.” Christ speaks as if he had not any things just then
which were specially his own, for he had not died then; he had not risen
then; he was not pleading then as the great Intercessor in heaven: all that
was to come. But still, he says, “Even now all things that the Father hath
are mine: all his attributes, all his glory, all his rest, all his happiness, all
his blessedness. All that is mine, and the Holy Ghost shall show that to
you.”
     But I might almost read my text in another light; for he has died, and
risen, and gone on high, and lo, he cometh. His chariots are on the way.
Now, there are certain things which the Father hath, and which Jesus
Christ hath, which are truly the things of Christ, emphatically the things
of Christ; and my prayer is, that you and I, preachers of the gospel,
might have this text fulfilled in us: “He shall take of mine — my things
— and shall show them unto you.”
     Suppose, dear brethren, that we are going to preach the word again,
and the Holy Spirit shows to us our Master in his Godhead. Oh, how we
will preach him as divine— how surely he can bless our congregation!
How certainly he must be able to subdue all things unto himself, seeing
that he is very God of very God! It is equally sweet to see him as man.
Oh, to have the Spirit’s view of Christ’s manhood! distinctly to
recognize that he is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, and that in
his infinite tenderness he will compassionate me, and deal with my poor
people, and with the troubled consciences that are round me ; that I have
still to go to them, and tell them of One who is touched with the feeling
of their infirmities, having been tempted in all points like as they still
are! Oh, my brothers, if we once, nay, if every time before we preach,
we get a view of Christ in his divine and human natures, and come down
fresh from that vision to speak about him, what glorious preaching it
would be for our people!
     It is a glorious thing to get a view of the offices of Christ by the Holy
Spirit; but especially of his office as a Saviour. I have often said to him,
“You must save my people. It is no business of mine. I never set up in
that line, or put over my door that I was a saviour; but thou hast been
apprenticed to this trade. Thou hast learned it by experience, and thou
dost claim it as thine own honour. Thou art exalted on high to be a
Prince and a Saviour. Do thine own work, my Lord.” I took this text,
and used it with sinners the other Sunday night, and I know that God
blessed it when I said to them, “May the Holy Ghost show you that
Christ is a Saviour! A physician does not expect you to make any
apologies when you call upon him because you are ill, for he is a
physician, and he wants you in order that he may prove his skill; so
Christ is a Saviour, and you need not apologize for going to him;
because he cannot be a Saviour if there is not somebody to be saved.”
The fact is, Christ cannot get hold of us anywhere except by our sin. The
point of contact between the sick one and the physician is the disease.
Our sin is the point of contact between us and Christ. Oh, that the Spirit
of God would take of Christ’s divine offices, especially that of a
Saviour, and show them unto us!
     Did the Holy Ghost ever show to you these things of Christ, namely,
his covenant engagements? When he struck hands with the Father, it
was that he would bring many sons unto glory; that of those whom the
Father gave him he would lose none, but that they should be saved; for
he is under bonds to his Father to bring his elect home. When the sheep
have to pass again under the hand of him that telleth them, they will go
under the rod one by one, each one having the blood-mark; and he will
never rest till the number in the heavenly fold shall tally with the
number in the book. So I believe; and it has seemed delightful to me to
have this shown to me when I have gone to preach. It is a dull, dreary,
wet, foggy morning. There are only a few present. Yes; but they are
picked people, whom God hath ordained to be there, and there will be
the right number there. I shall preach, and there will be some saved. We
do not go at a peradventure; but, guided by the blessed Spirit of God, we
go with a living certainty, knowing that God has a people that Christ is
bound to bring home, and bring them home he will; and while he shall
see of the travail of his soul, his Father shall delight in every one of
them. If you get a clear view of that, it will give you backbone, and
make you strong. “He shall take of mine, and shall show you my
covenant engagements, and when you see them you shall be comforted.”
     But, beloved, the Holy Ghost favours you by taking what is
peculiarly Christ’s, namely, his love, and showing that to you. We have
seen it, seen it sometimes more vividly than at other times. But if the full
blaze of the Holy Spirit were to be concentrated upon the love of Christ,
and our eyesight enlarged to its utmost capacity, it would be such a
vision that heaven could not excel it. We should sit with our Bible
before us in our study, and feel, “Well now, here is a man, whether in
the body or out of the body, I cannot tell. Such a man is caught up into
the third heaven.” Oh, to see the love of Christ in the light of the Holy
Ghost! When it is so revealed to us, it is not merely the surface which
we see, but the love of Christ itself. You know that you never saw
anything yet, strictly speaking. You only see the appearance of the thing
— the light reflected by it; that is all you see. But the Holy Ghost shows
us the naked truth, the essence of the love of Christ; and what that
essence is— that love without beginning, without change, without limit,
without end; and that love set upon his people simply from motives
within himself, and from no motive ab extra — what that must be, what
tongue can tell? Oh, it is a ravishing sight!
     I think that if there could he one sight more wonderful than the love
of Christ, it would be the blood of Christ.
“Much we talk of Jesu’s blood,
But how little’s understood!”
It is the climax of God. I do not know of anything more divine. It seems
to me as if all the eternal purposes worked up to the blood of the cross,
and then worked from the blood of the cross towards the sublime
consummation of all things. Oh, to think that he should become man!
God has made spirit, pure spirit, embodied spirit; and then materialism;
and somehow, as if he would take all up into one, the Godhead links
himself with the material, and he wears dust about him even as we wear
it; and taking it all up, he then goes, and, in that fashion, redeems his
people from all the evil of their soul, their spirit, and their body, by the
pouring out of a life which, while it was human, was so in connection
with the divine, that we speak correctly of “ the blood of God.” Turn to
the twentieth chapter of the Acts, and read how the apostle Paul puts it:
“Feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”
I believe that Dr. Watts is not wrong when ho says— “God that loved
and died.” It is an incorrect accuracy, a strictly absolute accuracy of
incorrectness. So it must be ever when the finite talks of the Infinite. It
was a wonderful sacrifice that could absolutely obliterate, annihilate,
and extinguish sin, and all the traces that could possibly remain of it; for
“He hath finished the transgression, made an end of sins, made
reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in everlasting righteousness.”
Ah, dear friends! you have seen this, have you not? but you have to see
more of it yet; and when we get to heaven, we shall then know what that
blood means, and with what vigour shall we sing, “Unto him that loved
us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood”! Will anybody be
there to say, “Is not that the religion of the shambles?” as they
blasphemously call it. Ah, my friends! they will find themselves where
they will wish they had believed “the religion of the shambles”; and I
think that it will burn like coals of juniper into the soul of any man that
has ever dared to talk like that, that he did despite unto the blood of God,
and so, by his own wilful deeds, will be cast away for ever.
     May the Holy Spirit show unto you Gethsemane, and Gabbatha, and
Golgotha! and then, may it please him to give you a sight of what our
Lord is now doing! Oh, how it would cheer you up at any time when
you were depressed, only to see him standing and pleading for you! Do
you not think that if your wife is ill, and your child is sick, and there is
scant food in the cupboard; if you were to go out at the back door, and
you saw him with the breastplate on, and all the stones glittering, and
your name there, and him pleading for you, you would go in and say,
“There, wife, it is all right. He is praying for us”? Oh, it would be a
comfort if the Holy Ghost showed you a pleading Christ! And then, to
think that he is reigning as well as pleading. He is at the right hand of
God, even the Father, who hath put all things under his feet. And he
waits till the last enemy shall lie there. Now, you are not afraid, are you,
of those who have been snubbing you and opposing you? Remember, he
hath said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye
therefore, and teach all nations; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world.”
     Next, and best of all, may the Holy Spirit give you a clear view of his
coming. This is our most brilliant hope: “Lo, he cometh!” The more the
adversary waxes bold, and the less of faith there is, and when zeal seems
almost extinct, these are the tokens of his coming. The Lord always said
so; and that he would not come unless there was a falling away first; and
so the darker the night grows, and the fiercer the storm becomes, the
better will we remember that he of the lake of Galilee came to them
upon the waves in the night when the storm was wildest. Oh, what will
his enemies say when he comes? When they behold the nail-prints of the
Glorified, and the Man with the thorn crown — when they see him
really come— they that have despised his word, and his ever-blessed
blood, how will they flee before that face of injured love! And we, on
the contrary, through his infinite mercy, will say, “This is what the Holy
Ghost showed us; and now we behold it literally. We thank him for the
foresights which he gave us of the beatific vision.”
     I have not done on the first head yet, because there is one point which
I want you to recollect. When the Holy Ghost takes of the things of
Christ, and shows them to us, he has a purpose in so doing. You will not
laugh, I hope, when I remind you of what the little boys sometimes do at
school with one another. I have seen a boy take out of his pocket an
apple, and say to his schoolmate, “Do you see that apple?” “Yes,” says
the other. “Then, you may see me eat it,” says he. But the Holy Ghost is
no Tantalus, taking of the things of Christ, and holding them up to mock
us. No: he says, “Do you see these things? If you can see them, you may
have them.” Did not Christ himself say, “Look unto me, and be ye
saved, all the ends of the earth”? Looking gives you a claim; and if you
can see him, he is yours. It is with you, with regard to the Spirit showing
you things, as it was with Jacob. You know Jacob lay down, and went to
sleep, and the Lord said to him, “The land whereon thou liest, to thee
will I give it.” Now, wherever you go, throughout the whole of
Scripture, if you can find a place where you can lie down, that is yours.
If you can sleep on a promise, that promise is yours. “Lift up now thine
eyes,” said God to Abraham, “and look from the place where thou art
northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for all the land
which thou seest, to thee will I give it.” The Lord increase our holy
vision of delighted faith; for there is nothing you see but you may also
enjoy; all that is in Christ is there for you.
     II. Now, secondly, WHAT THE HOLY SPIRIT AIMS AT, AND
WHAT HE REALLY ACCOMPLISHES. “He shall glorify me.”
     Ah, brothers! the Holy Ghost never comes to glorify us, or to glorify
a denomination, or, I think, even to glorify a systematic arrangement of
doctrines. He comes to glorify Christ. If we want to be in accord with
him, we must preach in order to glorify Christ. May we never have this
thought, — “I will put that bit in; it will tell well. The friends will feel
that oratory is not quite extinct, that Demosthenes lives again in this
village.” No, no. I should say, brother, though it is a very delightful
piece, strike that out ruthlessly; because if you have had a thought of
that kind about it, you had better not put yourself in the way of
temptation by using it. “Yes, that is a magnificent sentence! I do not
know where I met with it, or whether it is my own. I am afraid that most
of our friends will not understand it; but then it will give them an
impression that they have a deep thinker in their pulpit.” Well then, it
may be very admirable, and, further, it might be a very right thing to
give them that precious piece; but if you have that thought about it,
strike it out. Strike it out ruthlessly. Say, “No, no, no! If it is not
distinctly my aim to glorify Christ, I am not in accord with the aim of
the Holy Ghost, and I cannot expect his help. We shall not be pulling the
same way, and therefore I will have nothing of which I cannot say that I
am saying it simply, sincerely, and only that I may glorify Christ.”
     How, then, does the Holy Spirit glorify Christ? It is very beautiful to
think that he glorifies Christ by showing Christ’s things. If you wanted
to do honour to a man, you would perhaps take him a present to decorate
his house. But here, if you want to glorify Christ, you must go and take
the things out of Christ’s house, “the things of Christ.” Whenever we
have to praise God, what do we do? We simply say what he is. “Thou art
this, and thou art that.” There is no other praise. We cannot fetch
anything from elsewhere, and bring it to God; but the praises of God are
simply the facts about himself. If you want to praise the Lord Jesus
Christ, tell the people about him. Take of the things of Christ, and show
them to the people, and you will glorify Christ. Alas! I know what you
will do. You will weave words together, and you will form and fashion
them, in a marvellous manner, till you have produced a charming piece
of literature. When you have carefully done that, put it in the fire under
the oven, and let it burn. Possibly you may help to bake some bread with
it. Brethren, it is better for us to tell what Christ is, than to invent ten
thousand fine words of praise in reference to him. “He shall glorify me,
for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”
     Again, I think that the blessed Spirit glorifies Christ by showing us
the things of Christ as Christ’s. Oh, to be pardoned! Yes, it is a great
thing; but to find that pardon in his wounds, that is a greater thing! Oh,
to get peace! Yes, but to find that peace in the blood of his cross!
Brethren, have the blood-mark very visibly on all your mercies. They
are all marked with the blood of the cross; but sometimes we think so
much of the sweetness of the bread, or of the coolness of the waters, that
we forget whence these came, and how they came, and then they lack
their choicest flavour. That it came from Christ is the best thing about
the best thing that ever came from Christ. That he saves me is,
somehow, better than my being saved. It is a blessed thing to go to
heaven; but I do not know that it is not a better thing to be in Christ, and
so, as the result of it, to get into heaven. It is himself, and that which
comes of himself, that becomes best of all, because it comes of himself.
So the Holy Ghost shall glorify Christ by making us see that these things
of Christ are indeed of Christ, and completely of Christ, and still are in
connection with Christ; and we only enjoy them because we are in
connection with Christ.
     Then it is said in the text, “He shall glorify me: for he shall take of
mine, and shall shew it unto you.” Yes, it does glorify Christ for the
Holy Spirit to show Christ to us. How often I have wished that men of
great minds might be converted! I have wished that we could have a few
Miltons, and such like men, to sing of the love of Christ; a few mighty
men, who teach politics, and the like, to consecrate their talents to the
preaching of the gospel. Why is it not so? Well, because the Holy Ghost
does not seem to think that that would be the way to glorify Christ
supremely; and he prefers, as a better way, to take us common-place sort
of persons, and to take the things of Christ, and to show them to us. He
does glorify Christ; and blessed be his name that ever my blear eyes
should look upon his infinite loveliness; that ever such a wretch as I,
who can understand everything but what I ought to understand, should
be made to comprehend the heights and depths, and to know, with all
saints, the love of Christ, that passeth knowledge. You see, in a school,
that clever boy. Well, it is not much for the master to have made a
scholar of him. But here is one who shines as a scholar, and his mother
says that he was the greatest dolt in the family. All his schoolfellows
say, “Why, he was our butt! He seemed to have no brains; but our
master, somehow, got some brain into him, and made him know
something which he appeared, at one time, incapable of knowing.”
Somehow, it does seem to be as if our very folly, and impotence, and
spiritual death— if the Holy Ghost shows to us the things of Christ—
will go towards the increase of that great glorifying of Christ at which
the Holy Spirit aims.
     Then, beloved brethren, since it is for the honour of Christ for his
things to be shown to men, he will show them to us, that we may go and
show them to other people. This we cannot do, except as he is with us to
make the others to see; but he will be with us while we tell forth what he
has taught us; and so the Holy Ghost will really be showing to others
while he is showing to us. A secondary influence will flow from this
service, for we shall be helped to use the right means to make others see
the things of Christ.
     III. Our time is almost gone; but in the third place I must just point
out to you HOWHE IS IN BOTH OF THESE THINGS OUR
COMFORTER.
     He is so, firstly, for this reason—that there is no comfort in the world
like a sight of Christ. He shows to us the things of Christ. Oh, brethren,
if you are poor, and if the Holy Ghost shows you that Christ had not
where to lay his head, what a sight for you! And if you are sick, and if
the Holy Ghost shows you what sufferings Christ endured, what comfort
comes to you! If you are made to see the things of Christ, each thing
according to the condition which you are in, how speedily you are
delivered out of your sorrow!
     And then, if the Holy Ghost glorifies Christ, that is the cure for every
kind of sorrow. He is the Comforter. I may have told you before, but I
cannot help telling you again, that many years ago, after the terrible
accident in the Surrey Gardens, I had to go away into the country, and
keep quite still. The very sight of the Bible made me cry. I could only
keep alone in the garden; and I was heavy and sad, for people had been
killed in the accident; and there I was, half dead myself; and I remember
how I got back my comfort, and I preached on the Sabbath after I
recovered. I had been walking round the garden, and I was standing
under a tree. If it is there now, I should know it; and I remember these
words: “Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a
Saviour.” “Oh”, I thought to myself, “I am only a common soldier. If I
die in a ditch, I do not care. The king is honoured. He wins the victory;”
and I was like those French soldiers in the old times, who loved the
emperor; and you know how, when they were dying, if he rode by, the
wounded man would raise himself up on his elbow, and cry once more,
“Vive l’ Empereur!” for the emperor was graven on his heart. And so, I
am sure, it is with every one of you, my comrades, in this holy war. If
our Lord and King is exalted, then let other things go which way they
like: if he is exalted, never mind what becomes of us. We are a set of
pigmies; it is all right if he is exalted. God’s truth is safe, we are
perfectly willing to be forgotten, derided, slandered, or anything else
that men please. The cause is safe, and the King is on the throne.
Hallelujah! Blessed be his name!