Wednesday, October 5, 2011

The Voice of the Spirit Himself




















The law of God is not given to us to be laid by upon the shelf to be obeyed at some future period of life, and the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is not so intended for the eleventh hour as to be lightly trifled with during the first ten. Wherever the Holy Ghost exhorts, he speaks in the present tense, and bids us now repent, or now believe, or now seek the Lord.

I pray you ever remember whenever you read the Bible, that it is the Spirit of the living God who there admonishes you to immediate obedience. The calls of the inspired word are not those of Moses, or David, or Paul, or Peter, but the solemn utterances of the Holy Ghost speaking through them. With what a dignity does this truth invest Holy Scripture, and with what solemnity does it surround our reading of it! Cavilling at Scripture, trifling with it, disputing its doctrines, or neglecting its admonitions, we grieve the Spirit of God; and this is very dangerous ground to trespass on, for although he is longsuffering and pitiful, yet remember it is of the sin against the Holy Ghost that it is said, “It shall never be forgiven.” Not every sin against the Holy Ghost is unpardonable; God be thanked for that; but still there is a sin against the Holy Spirit: which shall never be forgiven: therefore do we tread, I say, on very delicate ground when we vex him, as we do if at any time in reading his word we count his teachings to be light matters.

Beware, I say, ye men of England, who have your Bibles in your houses among whom the word of the Lord is common as wheaten bread, beware how ye treat it; for in rejecting it ye reject not alone the voice of apostles and prophets, but the voice of the Holy Spirit himself.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Entreaty of the Holy Ghost," delivered March 1, 1874. Image by nosha on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

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