SermonIndex Classics - A.W. Tozer

A. W. Tozer: If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Now in this series of sermons, sometimes I will use the words "the Holy Spirit," and sometimes I will use the words "the Holy Ghost." They mean exactly and precisely the same thing. Their old Anglo-Saxon word "gast" has been turned into our English "ghost," and it means a spirit. So when we say "the Holy Ghost," we're saying in the old Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan English, "the Holy Spirit." So it makes no difference which I say; I mean the same thing.

And let me start by reminding you that about a half a century ago, the liberals committed a great blunder. And that blunder was the neglect or the denial of the deity of Jesus. They either didn't talk about it at all, or else they explained the deity of Jesus away. They denied or explained away or neglected to mention his lordship over the church. This was a stupid and a dangerous blunder, and it brought inner blindness to thousands and spiritual decay and death to great, greater thousands.

Now in more recent times, say within forty years back, the evangelical Christians—I suppose you know what I mean when I say evangelical Christians; I mean the gospel Christians such as you and I, people who believe the Bible, Bible Christians. That's what I mean by the evangelical Christians.

I mentioned the word "evangelical Christian" down in the convention of doctors in Wheaton last week. And afterward, a fine distinguished-looking gentleman came down to the front. He said, "I am a Methodist, and I don't know what you mean by 'evangelical.' Would you tell me what you mean?" So I explained to this good Methodist brother who didn't know the difference between an evangelical and a modernist, what the difference was and what I meant by what I had said. He thanked me and was very courteously and walked away.

Now evangelical Christianity has committed a great blunder over the last years. It has been a neglect or the denial of the deity of the Holy Spirit. I think I ought to modify that, for I doubt very much whether any evangelical ever denied the deity of the Holy Spirit, but we certainly neglect him. And of course, we have neglected his lordship within the church.

Now the result of this, of course, has been this failure to honor the Holy Spirit. The results have been many. For one has been that the fellowship of the church has degenerated into a social fellowship with a mild religious flavor. I want you to know something about me; it isn't important, but I just want to say it while I'm here, while I have the time. I either want God or I don't want anything at all to do with religion.

You'd never get me interested in the old-maid social club with a little bit of Christianity thrown in to give it respectability. I either want it all or I don't want any. I want God or I'm perfectly happy to go out and be something else. I think the Lord had something like that in mind when he said, "I wish thou wert hot or cold. Because thou art neither hot or cold, I will spew thee out of my mouth."

And another result of the failure to honor the Holy Ghost is that so many non-spiritual and unspiritual and anti-spiritual features have been brought into the church. If the average church couldn't run on a hymnbook and the Bible, we just wouldn't be able to do it. You know, the church started out with a Bible and then it got a hymnbook. And for years they had a hymnbook and the Bible.

Now we have to have all kinds of truck. A lot of people, they couldn't serve God at all without at least one van load of equipment to keep them happy. And all this stuff, this fellowship, now the attraction that we have to win people and keep them coming—it may be fine, it may be elevated, it may be cheap, it may be degraded, it may be coarse, it may be artistic. It all depends upon who's running the show, you know.

But because the Holy Spirit is not the center of attraction and the Lord is not the one who is in charge, we bring in all sorts of anti-scriptural and unscriptural claptrap to keep the people happy, keep them coming. And now the horrible part about that isn't that that is true, but the horrible part about it is that it needs to be at all. The great woe is not the presence of religious toys and trifles, but the necessity for them because the presence of the eternal Spirit is not in our midst.

The most important one that could possibly be here tonight is the Holy Spirit. And the tragedy and woe of the hour is that we neglect him, and then in order to make up for his absence, we have to do something to keep our own spirits up. I said in Chicago—I talk this way wherever I go, you know. I preach this way at Moody Church and everywhere I go. Some like it, some don't, but they come back to see this great sight and wonder how on earth you can say something and not sound like a preacher in saying it.

Well, I've worked on that all my life. I've been a preacher since I was 18, but I sure tried hard not to sound like one. Well, what is the Holy Spirit? Well, for the first place, Spirit is another mode of being. Now shake your head real hard on that. Spirit is another mode of being than matter. You know, we bump this pulpit—I won't do it because it'd spoil the tape—but you can pick a thing up and bounce it around; that's matter. You're composed of matter. That head you have on there and that body, that's matter.

But you know that's only one mode of existence. There's another, and that's at least another, and that's spirit. And the difference between matter and spirit is that matter possesses weight and size and color and extension in space. It can be measured and weighed, and it has form. But the Holy Spirit is not material; therefore, he does not have weight nor dimension nor shape nor extension in space.

Now one power of Spirit is to penetrate matter, to penetrate things, all substances. Your spirit, for instance, dwells in your body somewhere and it penetrates your body and doesn't hurt the body. It's in there penetrating because it's another form. You know, when Jesus had risen from the dead and he was no more mere matter, he came into a locked door where it was locked and shut, and he came evidently through the wall somehow and managed to penetrate and get into that room without unlocking it.

Now he couldn't have done that before he died, but he did it afterward. And spirit then is another kind of substance; it's different from material things and it can penetrate personality. Your spirit can penetrate your personality. One personality can penetrate another personality. The Holy Spirit can penetrate your personality, your spirit.

The Bible talks in 1 Corinthians about "no man knowing the things of God save the spirit of the man that's in him. No man knows the things of a man save the spirit of the man that's in him. No man knows the things of God except the Spirit of God," which reveals them. So the Spirit of God can penetrate the spirit of man.

Now I want to just say what the Holy Spirit is not. The Holy Spirit's not enthusiasm. Some people get enthusiasm; they imagine it's the Holy Spirit. Why, we have people down in our part of the country that can get worked up over a song until they're actually sent, you know. They say "get sent" just by a song, and they imagine that's the Spirit. Not necessarily, because those same people, most of them, go out and live just like the world.

And the Holy Spirit never enters a man and then lets him live like the world. You can be sure of that. And incidentally, that's the reason most people don't want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They want to live the way they want to live and have the Holy Spirit as a bit of something extra, as you might have a diamond stick pin or something very beautiful on your clothing. They want the Holy Ghost to be added, but the Holy Spirit will not be an addition. The Holy Spirit must be Lord or he won't come at all. But that's for another sermon.

Now the Holy Spirit is a person. I want you to get that. You can spell that with capital letters if you want to. The Holy Spirit is a person. He's not enthusiasm. He's not courage nor energy nor the personification of all good qualities, like Jack Frost is the personification of cold weather and Santa Claus the personification of wanting to give somebody a tie.

That's a personification. But the Holy Spirit is not a personification of anything. The Holy Spirit is a person just the same as you're a person. And he has all the qualities of a person. The Holy Spirit has substance but not material substance. He has individuality. He is one being and not another. He has will, and he has intelligence, and he has feeling, and he has knowledge and sympathy and ability to love and see and think and hear and speak and desire and grieve and rejoice.

He is a person, this Holy Spirit. And Jesus said, "I'll send him unto you, and I will not leave you comfortless, but he will come. And when he is come, he will take the things of mine and show them unto you." The most important thing in the world is that this blessed Holy Spirit is now present here in this church tonight.

Jesus, you know, in his body is at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, interceding for us, and he will be there until he comes again. But he said, "I will send another Comforter, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit," and he will be my representative, and he will be all that I have.

Now who is the Holy Spirit? I've spoken briefly on what is the Holy Spirit, and I have said he is spirit and not matter. He is personality. He is individuality. He has intelligence and love and a memory, and he can communicate with you and he can love you. And he can be grieved when you grieve him. He can be quenched as any friend can be shut up if you turn on him. If he's in your home as a guest and you suddenly turn on him, of course he'll be hushed into hurt silence because you've wounded him. And so we can wound the Holy Spirit.

Now that's what he is. But who is the Holy Spirit? Well, the historic church said that the Holy Spirit is God. Some of you who attended some of the denominations remember the Nicene Creed that is quoted every so often. If I recall, it runs something like this:

"I believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, begotten of him before all ages. God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made. Being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who with the Father and Son together is worshiped and glorified."

Now there's what the creed said way back there sixteen hundred years ago. And then there's another creed that was about thirteen hundred years ago, maybe fourteen, and that's called the Athanasian Creed. That came into being way back there when a man named Arius stood up and said that Jesus was a good man and a great man, but he wasn't God. He wasn't really divine. He was not the second person of the Trinity.

And there was a man named Athanasius. He said, "No, the Bible teaches that Jesus is God," and they had all kinds of controversy about it there. Somebody came to Athanasius and said, "Athanasius, the whole world is against you on this." He said, "All right then, I'm against the whole world." He didn't mind having them against him.

But they had that great gathering at Nicaea, and there they formed out of it—out of it came the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene Creed is supposed to have been born there. But the church fathers got together and they fought out what the Bible had to say about the three persons of the Trinity. You know, most of us were so busy reading religious fiction, we never get around to it.

So I thought it might be nice tonight if I took you back about thirteen hundred years and let's listen to our fathers tell about who Jesus is. Well, here's what it said: "There's one person of the Father and another of the Son and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is but one. The glory is equal and the majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son and such is the Holy Ghost."

Now this is what they said back in the days of Athanasius. They said, "The Father is uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Ghost is uncreated. The Father's infinite, the Son's infinite, and the Holy Ghost is infinite. The Father's eternal, the Son's eternal, and the Holy Ghost is eternal. And yet there are not three eternals, but one eternal. So there are not three uncreated, nor three infinite, but one uncreated and one infinite."

"So also the Father's almighty, and the Son's almighty, and the Holy Spirit's almighty. Yet there are not three almighties, but one almighty. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. Yet there are not three Gods, but one God. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy Ghost is Lord. Yet there are not three Lords, but one Lord."

"So the Father is God, and the Son is God, and so the Father's Lord, and the Son's Lord, and the Holy Ghost is also these things. The Father's made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made nor created, and the Holy Ghost is of the Father and the Son, not made nor created nor begotten but proceeding."

Oh brother, I don't know what that does to you, but that's just like a chicken dinner to my soul to hear that, to know that this has come down the years, that this is what our fathers believed. And do you know what? When that company of Christians met and declared this kind of thing, they tell us that when they met and gathered there, that some of them had their tongues pulled out, some of them had their ears burned off, some of them had their arms torn off, some of them had lost a leg, all because they'd stood for this thing, that Jesus was Lord to the glory of God the Father.

And the Romans had persecuted them under Diocletian and Caligula and the rest of them. And these men were martyrs who hadn't quite died but were maimed horribly. But old saints of God and learned scholars who knew the truth and they came there, and they wrote these things up and gave it to us for the world and for the ages. And I thank God on my knees for them.

Well, now not only do the historic church say that the Holy Spirit is God, but the scriptures say that the Holy Spirit is God. And I might say this to you: that if the church said it and the scripture didn't say it, I'd reject it. I wouldn't believe an archangel if he came to Toronto with a wing spread of twelve feet shining like an atom bomb just at the moment it goes off, if he couldn't give me chapter and verse.

I want to know it's here in the book. I am not a traditionalist. And anybody comes to me and says "this tradition," I say, "All right, very nice, interesting if true, but is it true? Give me verse and chapter." So I want to know now, were these old brethren when they said all this, were they telling the truth?

Well, listen to what the scriptures have to say. The scripture says he's God, gives to him the attributes that belong to God and the Son and the Father. For instance, the 139th Psalm, it says there that "whither shall I go from thy spirit, and whither shall I hide from thy presence?" That is omnipresence. Not even the devil is omnipresent. Only God can claim omnipresence. And the psalmist attributed omnipresence to the Holy Spirit.

Then in Job, he is given the power to create. Job 26 and 33 says, "By his spirit he garnished the heavens and made the crooked serpent." And he said, "The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life." Now there we have the breath, the ghost, the spirit of the Almighty has given me life. So the Holy Spirit is here said to be creator.

He issues commands. "Thus saith the Spirit," and only God can do that. He is called Lord in 2 Corinthians 3. And there's a baptismal formula. "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." There's a benediction: "The love of God, the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost."

Now I want to ask you something. Now this is going to be a little shocking, maybe, but I want to ask you. If the Spirit of God was not God, if he was not God but something less, if he was a man or an angel or something else, if he just wasn't God as some people say, and if the scriptures don't teach that he's God, I want to ask you how it would sound if I introduced here the name of say the Archangel Gabriel or somebody?

Suppose that I said, "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and St. Paul." Wouldn't that be a shocking, horrible thing? If I said, "I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Virgin Mary," wouldn't that be a horrible thing? For you cannot attribute deity to St. Paul. You cannot attribute deity to the Virgin, though we honor her, for she was the mother of our Lord.

And the mother of our Lord's body, not the mother of the Lord's deity. For his deity had been before the foundation of the world. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by him and without him was anything, nothing made that was made." And the very atoms that composed the body of his mother had been made by the holy Lord whom she bore.

But suppose that we introduced her there, or introduced Gabriel the Archangel there? And we'd say "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Archangel Gabriel." Everybody would run for the door. They'd say "that's heresy in that church." It would be a horrible thing to introduce an archangel or an angel or a man in where the Holy Spirit belongs. Never, never, my brother. The Holy Spirit is God.

And the most important thing here tonight is that the Holy Spirit is present. There is unseen deity present. Now I cannot bring him here. I can only tell you that he is here. That is all. I can tell you that he is present in our midst, a knowing, feeling personality. He knows how you're reacting to what I'm saying. He knows why you came. He knows what you're going to say as soon as you get out on the sidewalk. He knows how you're thinking now.

He knows your up-rising and your down-sitting and understands your thought afar off. And you can't hide from him. He's present in our midst. "I will send another Comforter to you, and he will abide with you." So he's here among us. We're here met as Christians in this, most of us are Christians here, and there's an invisible presence here.

And we can't see him, but we know he's here. Now he is, as I have said, indivisible from the Father and the Son. And he is all God and exercise all the rights of God. And he merits all worship and all love and all obedience. That's who the Holy Spirit is.

And here's a beautiful thing about the Holy Spirit. Being the Spirit of Jesus, you will find him exactly like Jesus. A lot of people have been frightened by people claiming to be filled with the Spirit and acting any way else but like the Spirit. Some people when they say they're filled with the Spirit, they are very stern and harsh and abusive. And others do weird things, and they say that's the Holy Spirit.

Well, the Holy Spirit is exactly like Jesus, just as Jesus is exactly like the Father. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," said Jesus. "And I will send you another Comforter, and he will take the things of mine and he will show them to you. He'll demonstrate me to you." Now what does the Holy Spirit think of babies? Well, what did Jesus think of babies? He thought of babies just what the Father did.

And the Father must think wonderfully well of babies because the Son took a baby in his arms and put his hand on his little bald head and said, "God bless you," and blessed the baby. Maybe theologians don't know why he did it, but I think I do. Because there's nothing sweeter and softer in all the world than the top of a little baldy baby's head. And Jesus put his hand on that little soft head and blessed it in the name of his Father.

Well, now the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. What does Jesus think, what does the Spirit think of babies then? Well, the Spirit thinks of babies just exactly what Jesus did. What does the Spirit think of sick people? Well, what did Jesus think of sick people? What does the Spirit think of sinful people? What did Jesus think of the woman dragged into his presence taken in adultery?

The Spirit feels exactly the way Jesus feels about everything. He is the Spirit of Jesus, and he acts exactly the way Jesus acts. If Christ Jesus our Lord, we could think him here in person, if he had that old toga on and were walking quietly down the aisle, there wouldn't be anybody run from Jesus. Nobody. They came to him. Mothers brought their babies. The sick came, the weary came, the tired came, the dispossessed came. Everybody came because he was the most magnetic person that ever lived.

Even old Friedrich Nietzsche, that nihilistic German philosopher that brought on World Wars I and II they tell me, he laid the groundwork for the Nazis. That old ungodly fellow, he said, "I like Jesus, I love Jesus, but I hate that man Paul." He couldn't take Paul, but he said he loved Jesus. And you'll not find anybody saying very much against Jesus personally because Jesus was the most winsome, the most loving, the most kindly, the tenderest, the most beautiful character that ever lived in all the world. And you know what he was? He was demonstrating the Spirit. He was demonstrating. That's the way the Spirit is.

So in all these sermons that I'm going to preach about how to be filled with the Spirit, how to walk with the Spirit, what difference does the Spirit make, and what is the promise of the Father, and how can we receive him? In all of this, I want you to think of the Spirit as cultured, gracious, loving, kind, gentle, just like our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Now, he's friendly. The Holy Spirit's friendly. We try to make him something else but friendly, but he's friendly. And because he's friendly, he may be grieved, as I said before. And we can grieve him by ignoring him, by resisting him, by doubting him or by sinning against him, by refusing to obey him, by turning our backs on him. We can grieve the Spirit. But you know there's one thing: there must be love present before there can be grief.

Let me give you an example. How long can a preach go? I don't want to take all your time. It's eighteen after; I should be through in another five minutes, shouldn't I? Well, the Holy Spirit I said was friendly. And he can be grieved, and he can be grieved because he's loving.

Suppose you had a 17-year-old son, and that son of yours began to go bad. I pray this might never happen. Thank God it did not happen with our six. And I hope it'll never happen with any you may have or love. But suppose you had a 17-year-old boy, and he got to that age where he wanted to take things in his own hand. And suppose that he joined up with some boy you didn't know, some stranger from another part of town, and they got into trouble.

And you were called down to the police station. And you went down, and here sat your boy and another boy you'd never seen in handcuffs. You know how you'd feel about it. You'd be sorry for the other boy, but you didn't love the other boy because you didn't know him. But with your own boy, your grief would penetrate your heart like a sword, for only love can grieve.

And if those two boys were sent off to prison, you might pity the boy you didn't know, but you'd grieve over the boy you did know. The mother can grieve because she loves. If you don't love, you can't grieve. So that when the scripture says, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God," it is telling us that he loves us so much that when we insult him, he's grieved. When we ignore him, he's grieved. When we resist him, he's grieved. When we doubt him, he's grieved.

But also we can please him by obeying and believing. And when we please him, he responds to us just like a pleased father responds, just like a pleased mother responds. He responds to us because he's pleased, because he loves us. Now, "He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto Avenue Road Church." The Spirit saith unto the churches and to this church.

The restoration of the Spirit to his rightful place in the church, in this church, in your life, is by all means the most important thing that could possibly take place. If you were to increase the attendance until there wasn't a place to put them, if you were to get ten thousand or twenty thousand dollars given to you, if you were to have anything that they have in churches that men want and love and put value on, and you didn't have the Holy Spirit, you might as well have nothing at all.

For "it is not by might nor by power, but it's by my Spirit." Not by the eloquence of a man, not by good music, not by good preaching, if this might pass for some kind of preaching, but it is by the Spirit that God works his mighty work. I said this morning that we had better throw ourselves back on God, for there'll be a day when we'll have nothing but God.

I didn't know when I said that, that last night around midnight, my friend Cecil Thomas got to a place suddenly where he has nothing but God. Nothing. He had friends all over the world. He had a big car. He had lots of things. But now he has nothing but God. And his nice little wife, nothing but God.

And we'd better now while we can do something about it, my friends, and bring the Holy Spirit of God back into the church, back by prayer, back by obedience, back by confession until he takes over. Then there will be life and light and power and victory and joy and fruit, and it will come to us and we can live upon a different level altogether—a level we never dreamed was possible before. Do you believe that? It's so much, friends.

So I'm going to stop tonight, for all I've done is taught. I haven't given any evangelism. I've just taught tonight. What is the Spirit? Who is the Spirit? How do we know who the Spirit is? We know by the scriptures. We know because the church fathers knew what the scriptures said.

And he is in our midst. But unless he is feelingly in our midst, unless he is consciously in our midst—that is, we're conscious of it—he might as well be somewhere else. Because it's possible to run a church without the Holy Spirit. That's the terrible thing. You organize it; you get a board and a pastor and a choir and a Ladies Aid and a Sunday School. And you get all organized—and I believe in organization. I'm not against it; I'm for it. You can get organized and then you get a pastor to turn the crank, and that's all there is to it, you know. The Holy Ghost can leave, and the pastor goes on turning the crank and nobody finds it out for five years. Oh, what a tragedy, my brother. What a horrible tragedy to the church of Christ.

But we don't have to have it that way. "He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." Now out of this kind of preaching, Avenue Road Church is going to do one of two things. It's going to be reactant from it, in which case, as I said to somebody, I came and I can go again. Or there's going to be an eager seeking, and I believe the latter will be the case. I believe that there will be an eager seeking for better things than that which we now have. And so we're going to seek God together these nights. Next week, come back and tell the people about it. We'll talk about the promise of the Father and show how that promise which is for you has its roots way back into the early chapters of the scriptures and on down the years. We'll go on and on night after night to reveal, develop this and show finally how to be filled. They're taking this down, they want to know when to start.