From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: I should like to call your attention once more to that great and profound statement which is to be found in Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, the first chapter, the second half of the 13th verse. The second half of the 13th verse in the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. In whom also after that he believed, he were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.

We come back to a consideration of this statement and I make no apology for dealing with it at such great length, because as I've been trying to indicate Sunday by Sunday, there is a sense in which there is no more important statement from the standpoint of the experience of Christian people than just this very statement.

More and more am I convinced and satisfied in my own mind that it is our misinterpretation of this teaching, our failure to realize its true richness, that accounts for so much of the barrenness and the poverty of the life of the church in these present times.

Elsewhere we've been looking at it and we have suggested that the apostle here is teaching quite plainly and clearly that this is something apart from belief, additional to belief.

That this authorized translation indeed does give the meaning, in whom after that he believed. In whom also after that he believed, or if you prefer it, in whom also having believed, which means the same thing.

That therefore it is something which is in addition to what we may call the common blessings of the Christian life. We've been at pains to indicate that, that it isn't regeneration.

You can be regenerate without knowing this sealing. You can be a Christian, you can be saved without knowing this. It isn't regeneration, it isn't faith, it isn't belief.

It isn't that which happens at conversion. It isn't the assurance that one can derive from a study of the scriptures and a belief of their various statements.

We have suggested that it is likewise not sanctification. And that is perhaps the most serious confusion of all, to confuse it with sanctification.

It obviously promotes and encourages sanctification, but it is not sanctification itself. Sanctification is something which starts from the moment we are born again. You can't be regenerate without the process of sanctification already commencing within you.

This obviously is a great stimulus to it, but it isn't sanctification, it isn't the same thing.

Well what is it? Well, we've been suggesting that it is that immediate and direct assurance which is given to us by the Holy Spirit that we are the children of God.

That we are, as Paul says in the very context, inheritors of this great inheritance that God has waiting for his people.

It is this direct and immediate assurance. It is this extraordinary experience, and it is an experience, and thereby you see essentially different from sanctification, which is not an experience, but a condition and a state. This is an experience.

In which the soul becomes certain, absolutely certain.

That it belongs to God and to Christ. God sets his seal upon us, as he did with his own dear son.

He sealed him there at the baptism, as Peter reminded us in that chapter we read just now, the voice came from the excellent glory saying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."

And the Holy Spirit came upon him in the form of a dove. It was the authentication of the son. He was always a son, but here it's authenticated, to him and to others.

And in the power and the strength of that, he went out on his great public ministry.

And in the same way, we have been reminding ourselves that the same thing exactly happened to the apostles and disciples on the day of Pentecost at Jerusalem.

The Lord said to them, "You shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." And there it happened.

And they were well aware of it. It was the greatest experience they ever had. They were filled with the spirit of joy and assurance and of rejoicing. And people looking at them said, "These men are full of new wine."

They thought they were beside themselves. It was this baptism of the Spirit, this sealing with the Spirit, which alas, is being represented as something which is not in the realm of experience, but just that act in which we are made members of the body of Christ. No, no.

It is the greatest experience that a Christian can ever have in this world. I don't hesitate to repeat that.

I have reminded you that the great Thomas Goodwin, 300 years ago, put it very differently and explicitly like that, when he said, "There's only one thing that can ever happen to a man greater than this experience of the sealing, and that is to be in heaven itself."

It is a foretaste of heaven. There's no question about it. It is a part of the absolute certainty of heaven.

That's that is what is meant by this sealing. The Spirit bear the witness with our spirits that we are children of God.

My spirit convinces me that I am a child of God because I take these scriptures. I take the promises to whosoever believeth. I go to the first Epistle of John and there I see the tests of Christian spiritual life. I look for them in myself, if I see them in any measure, well I know that I'm a child of God.

John wrote his epistle in order that we might know it, and if we apply his tests, we can know it.

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. We delight in keeping his commandments and his commandments are not grievous to us, and so on.

Now my spirit can find assurance in those ways.

But this is something additional. This is something beyond the realm and the reach of my spirit.

It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with my spirit that I am a child of God.

Now all who's ever written about this or preached about it are agreed in saying, "It's very difficult to put this thing into words." There is something about it which baffles description.

It seems to me that we are given a very good statement concerning it in the Book of Revelation, in the second chapter, in the 17th verse. Listen to this: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna. And will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."

There is something almost secret about this, by which I mean at any rate that it's very difficult to put it into words.

But any man who's ever known this even to the slightest or the faintest extent will have to agree with me when I say that there is nothing that he's ever known which is in any way comparable to this.

There is an immediacy about it. It's that condition in which things which you've known before and which you've believed before, which you've accepted and have relied on before, they suddenly become luminous. They're suddenly made plain with a clarity that is heavenly and divine, and you just know.

If one may venture on such a comparison, there is always an element in love which cannot be put into words.

And it is the same with this. It is an experience of God's love, and it is an experience in turn of our love going out to him. We love him because he first loved us.

And I say there is something almost inexpressible about it.

And yet it's the most real thing that can ever happen to us. Well now I say that I'm adverting to this at this length because it does seem abundantly clear from the New Testament scriptures and from the long history of the Christian church.

That there is nothing which is so essential from the standpoint of witness and of testimony as just this.

This is the key to all witnessing and testifying, which is not mechanical. You can witness and testify in a mechanical manner. It has very little value, but this comes from the heart.

It is only those who really know these things who can tell others about them.

And even then, as I'm saying, they cannot tell as they would like to.

And that is the reason therefore why we should pay such attention to it. It isn't merely that it is the most marvelous experience a Christian can ever have.

It is the way to make us all effective as Christians. To make us alive, to make us radiant.

As you have invariably heard, as I've shown you, in every period of revival and reawakening. Well now, we've been considering various difficulties and problems which people have in their minds with regard to this doctrine.

We tried to show last Sunday morning its relationship to the conversion experience and to sanctification. We considered the dramatic element.

It needn't of necessity be dramatic always, in the sense that it was dramatic in the case of John Wesley, of Whitfield, or any one of those other striking experiences.

It is always real, but it needn't of necessity be identical in form or intensity with what some of God's great saints have experienced.

And likewise with the emotional element.

I do want to insist again upon this emotional element because the whole tendency today is to decry emotion.

But you cannot have this sealing with the Spirit without your emotions being moved and disturbed.

If you can love without your emotions being engaged, well then you can be sealed with the Spirit without your emotions being engaged.

But I still would like a fuller amplification by way of definition of that sort of love in which the emotions are not engaged. It's not love.

You can't love dispassionately. You can't love without your whole being being involved. Love is totalitarian. You're moved. Your emotions are kindled.

And you can't love God, and you can't love the Lord Jesus Christ and say, "Nothing emotional, of course."

No, no, this being an experience of God's love and your love going out in return is something which moves us, as I say, more profoundly than anything else. The love of Jesus, what it is, none but his loved ones know.

And the question is, do we know it? Do we know something about this name written on the white stone? Have we tasted of the hidden manna?

That's the question. Well now there are certain difficulties still which we have to consider. Here's one of them.

People very rightly ask this question. They say, "Did all the first Christians have this?"

Because they say Paul seems there to be saying that every single member of the church at Ephesus and the other churches to which this circular letter was sent, that they all had been sealed, "In whom also, after that he believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." Now they say, "Surely that does explicitly say that every one of them had been sealed by the Spirit because they were Christians. And if so," they say, "doesn't the same apply now?"

"Why therefore do you say that one may be a Christian without knowing this sealing of the Spirit?"

Now this, as I've said, is a very important question.

I think in many ways it's the most important question of all we can ask with respect to this teaching.

And let me add it is also an extremely difficult question. And I can but suggest to you what for myself is an adequate and a sufficient answer.

Now I would approach this question, this problem in this way.

This statement here is one of many similar and comparable statements which you find scattered about in these New Testament epistles. Take for instance this: In the fifth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, in the fifth verse, we read this: "And hope," he says, "makes us not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us." Now there again you see Paul is saying, isn't he, that the love of God is shed abroad, it has been shed abroad in all its profusion in the heart of every Christian. The love of God, he says, has been so shed abroad.

So you might equally well ask the same question, "Did that happen to every one of the first Christians? Why then does it not happen to every Christian now? Or do you say that it has happened?" "Would you all claim that the love of God has been shed abroad in your heart? Not just that you feel some occasional glimmerings of the love of God, but that it's been poured out into your heart until your heart is overflowing." It's a comparable statement.

Or take another one: In the first Epistle of Peter, in the first chapter and the eighth verse, you will read these words: "Whom having not seen, you love. In whom, though now you see him not yet believing, you rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory." Is that true of you?

Peter, you see, makes a statement, a universal statement, about all these Christian people. He says, "That is true of you." So, you see, it's comparable to that statement in the fifth of Romans and to this statement here in this 13th verse of the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. These there are many others that I could quote you, they seem to be applied universally to all the Christians who were designed and meant to read the letters.

Very well then, in the light of that, how do we explain this? Well, surely we are entitled to say this: It's quite clear and obvious that the apostle Paul didn't know every single member of the church at Ephesus and these other churches. He certainly didn't know every member of the church at Rome. And the apostle Peter, we have clear evidence, most certainly did not know the people to whom he was writing. He writes to them as the strangers that are scattered abroad throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, and so on. He didn't know them. But he's heard that there were certain Christians in certain churches, and he writes a general circular letter to them. He hasn't a detailed knowledge of every single one of them, but he writes this general way. From which I personally draw this conclusion, that in all these universal and general statements, the writers are dealing with what they regard as the norm or the standard. They are not saying of necessity that this is true of every particular single individual Christian. But when they write a general letter to a church, they write on the assumption that these people are fully Christian and they address them as such. Now Peter is obviously doing that. There were obvious variations in all these churches. But Peter writes to them all and says, "Whom having not seen, you do love. In whom, though now you see him not yet believing, you rejoice with a joy unspeakable and full of glory."

Now I say the apostle doesn't know every single person to whom he's writing, but he's writing there of what should be true, what is the norm and the standard for every true Christian. That's one part of the answer. That the statements are clearly meant to have that general reference. But I want to go beyond that.

I want to go further and suggest that it is indeed more than conceivable, it is even likely, that all these first Christians were given the experience. What I mean is this.

You look at that event which is described in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Clearly that was unique in this sense. It was unique in its extent. It was unique in its intensity. Now let's be careful about this. I do not hold the view that that was something that happened once and forever and is never to be repeated. I think that is the whole error about this matter. But I am suggesting that at the beginning it was more intense than it has been since.

Now, not only do you get that at the beginning in the Acts of the Apostles, but if you read the history of any great revival that has ever taken place since then in the history of the church, you will find that every revival is more or less an exact repetition of that very thing which happened at the beginning. Isn't this the case that when you have a great revival, you may have large numbers of people, perhaps hundreds of people at a time, having this unusual and remarkable experience, which only seems to come to an occasional person here and there in times in the church when there is no revival. When there is a revival, the blessing is poured out in a lavish manner, covering a wide area, and large numbers of people testify to it. Indeed, it has often been pointed out that more can happen in a single day in a revival than might happen in a hundred years without a revival. Now it doesn't mean that in the other days the church wasn't Christian. It was. And the Holy Spirit was doing his work. And people are given this experience one here and one there, but at a time of revival, it's made more or less universal. And still more obviously was that the case at the beginning of the Christian church. God was setting out here the standard and the norm and the pattern for the whole church. So he, as it were, does this in order that we may have examples and samples. It is as if God said, "Well now then, this is what I promise to do. I am doing it for you to see what's possible for you in order to encourage us to seek it."

So that I believe it is possible that in all these early churches, when they were first founded, it may well have been the case that this particular gift, this blessing, this sealing with the Spirit was given to all. We certainly see it happening to that large number on the day of Pentecost. We see it happening to those Samaritans as the result of the visit of Peter and John. We see it happening to the apostle Paul. We see it happening in the house of Cornelius. We see Paul giving the same blessing to those people, those 12 disciples that he found, you remember, at Ephesus. It seems to have been the norm and the standard. These apostles by laying on their hands could give this blessing. That has clearly ceased in the history of the church. But there, God at the beginning, I say, was laying down the pattern. So that when Paul here writes like this to these Ephesians, I think you are entitled to give one or the other of those two explanations, either that they had all actually literally received it, because they were in the early church, or else that the apostle is speaking generally and speaking of the norm and the standard, rather than about every single individual particular member of the church.

Well then that leads us to the next question, which is still more relevant to us and more practical. Is this meant for every Christian therefore?

I've noticed someone may say that you emphasized what happens in the Acts of the Apostles. I've noticed that you've kept on talking about what happens in revivals. I noticed that a few weeks ago, when you read out the experiences of certain men, the men you talked about were men like Whitfield and Wesley and Jonathan Edwards and DL Moody. And I noticed, said someone, that in every case they were some outstanding men of God. From which many have deduced this, that this is only meant for such outstanding people, that it is not meant for ordinary Christians. That it is only meant for some unusual, exceptional saints. But that is entirely wrong.

And I can prove it to you by scripture. It is meant for all Christians.

You remember Peter preaching there on the day of Pentecost, and after he'd been preaching for a while, under the power of the Spirit, men cried out saying, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" Peter replied saying, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the promise is unto you, and unto your children, and to as many as are far off. Indeed, unto as many as the Lord our God shall call." For all, there is no limit, there is no distinction. It is not only meant for apostles or outstanding servants of God. It is meant for all Christian people. God is the father of every Christian in exactly the same way. He is the father of the least Christian in precisely the same manner as he is of the most exalted servant in the church. It is meant for all, "The promise is unto you, and to your children, and to as many as are far off."

And of course, the subsequent history of the church proves this to be the case. I've already shown you that it seems to have been the case in the New Testament church. The strangers scattered abroad, yes, they rejoiced in him with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. And if you read the subsequent history of the church, you will find that people whose names you've never heard of have experienced this. You know, it was the case in various branches of the Methodist church, at its beginning 200 years ago, that they wouldn't receive a man into church membership unless he had this assurance. Now I believe that that was going a bit too far, but I'm sure that it was airing on the right side. The man had to have this assurance. He had to have the sealing before they were really satisfied with him. They stressed this element of this special direct assurance that is given by the Holy Spirit.

Very well then, I say that it is meant for all. Let us again bear this in mind that I am not saying that it always must be present with the same intensity. You've discovered that, haven't you, sometimes, if you've used a seal yourself? Sometimes the seal, the mark is left on the wax very plainly and clearly. Sometimes it's faint and almost indistinct, but you can make it out. That's enough. All I say is that it's there, that it should be there. I'm not insisting that we all should have the profound and moving experience of a man like Jonathan Edwards, who tells us that it came upon him in waves until he was sweating, though the temperature was high. And there he was, not knowing what to do with himself scarcely, and you'll find that a man like Finney, so different theologically, describes the same thing in almost exactly the same terminology. It came, they say, in wave upon wave, and was overwhelming and almost crushing to the physical frame. Now, it needn't happen with that intensity.

But I do say again that it is the birthright of every Christian to be absolutely certain and sure of it, because you are children. God hath sent forth the Spirit of adoption into our hearts crying, "Abba, Father." You may be, as it were, a child not gifted with intelligence. You may be malformed in a sense. I'm using an earthly comparison to bring out my point. But there's a little child in a family. It isn't quite normal, you say, it's not fully developed, but it's as much a child of the father and mother as the highly intelligent member of that family. It's sonship, and the little child knows that. So every Christian should know this, this sealing with the Spirit. Well, very well, that brings me to my last question.

In the light of that, someone, "Should we seek it?" And my answer without any hesitation is, "Yes, obviously." It is to be sought. Now we must be careful about this as to how we seek it. And here again I would start with a negative, which to me is all important. There is nothing that I know in contemporary teaching that I regard as so dangerous and so unscriptural as the teaching which tells us, with regard to almost every blessing in the Christian life, that all we've got to do is this: is to take it by faith and not worry about our feelings. You're familiar with the teaching. They say, "Don't worry about your feelings, take it by faith. You believe the word, yes, well, very well, receive it, take it. Get up and act on it." Now you find this taught with regard to conversion. You find it taught with regard to sanctification. You find it taught with regard to assurance. You find it taught with regard to healing. And there have been some terrible tragedies in every single one of those realms as the result of it. Let me give you this by way of illustration, just to show you what I'm trying to say.

A great man like the late Andrew Murray, at one time was a great believer in what is called faith healing. And he taught this very thing which I'm mentioning. He said that this is how you should regard it: "If you are taken ill, well, you read the scriptures and you believe that they teach you that it is always God's will that a Christian should be healthy. It is never God's will that a Christian should be ill." That's what he said the scriptures teach, it's not my teaching. But he said, "You believe that, very well then. If you're taken ill, this is what you do. You go to God and you tell him that you believe these scriptures, you believe this teaching. You therefore ask him for healing and you get up from your feet believing that you've had it. You don't feel any better, doesn't matter at all. You believe God's word, you take your healing by faith and you go on, you begin to do everything as if you were perfectly well, that's faith."

But you know there came a time when Andrew Murray ceased to believe that. And I'll tell you why. He had a favorite nephew of his who was suffering from a certain chest complaint. Andrew Murray was due to go on a series of preaching meetings in a certain part of South Africa, and the nephew was anxious to go with him, but of course, in his condition he wasn't fit to go. So Andrew Murray talked to him. The young man believed the same teaching, and they both went on their knees together, and they asked God for healing, and they got up and said, "All right, you're healed." The young man packed his bags and off they went together. But they hadn't been away more than a fortnight before the young man died.

I say that I use that illustration in order to bring home this point. My dear friend, this is something that you do not have to receive in that way, apart from feelings, for this reason. When you are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, you will know it. You do not accept it by faith apart from feelings. You must go on asking for it until you've got it, until you've had it. I know of nothing more pernicious than that teaching. And I believe it's responsible, as I've suggested, for much of the present state of the Christian church. We people go through the whole of the Christian life like that. They say, "Don't worry about your feelings, you take it by faith." The result is they don't seem to have any experience at all. It's a kind of believism. They're saying things to themselves. It's a kind of auto-suggestion.

When God blesses the soul, the soul knows it. When God reveals his heart of love to you, you are melted at the sight. Your heart is moved. What if Peter and those on the day of Pentecost had accepted this teaching? Oh, how different the story of the Christian church would be. Feel it, of course they did. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. They were radiant. They were above and beyond themselves. They scarcely knew what to do with themselves, and they spoke with this amazing authority and assurance, and everybody looked at them aghast and amazed and said, "What is this?" Oh, let us be very careful that we don't rob ourselves of some of God's richest blessings. When God seals you with the Spirit, you will know it. You won't have to take it by faith, irrespective of your feelings and your condition, and just go on saying, "I must have had it because I believed, I've taken God's word for it." You won't have to persuade yourself. The persuasion will be done by the Holy Ghost, and you will know something of this rejoicing with a joy unspeakable and full of glory.

But also, let me say this, because I'm saying that I am not suggesting that we therefore should indulge in what are sometimes been called tarrying meetings. Now there was an element in which those who started tarrying meetings were right. They at any rate knew that it was something experimental. But they then said, "Well now then, let us meet together and let us wait until we have it." And they would wait for days and sometimes for weeks, and again certain calamities tended to follow. And again, of course, for an obvious, obvious reason. You are immediately by doing that, creating certain psychological conditions. If you wait like that without food and drink, and in a tense atmosphere, there is always an enemy at hand who is ready to counterfeit. And there is always our own psychology, and the power of persuasion. And there have been tragedies along those lines. People working themselves up into an ecstasy, waiting and waiting and waiting, and say, "I will not go out of the building until I've had it." But you see, apart from that, there is this other terrible fallacy. It forgets the Lordship of the Spirit. It forgets the sovereignty of God. It is he who decides when to give this blessing. It is he decides to whom to give it. We cannot command him. We must never adopt that attitude of saying, "Very well now then, I'm going to fulfill the conditions and I wait until it's happened." That is unscriptural. That is not God's method. He certainly told these disciples to tarry until the day of Pentecost. It was because he had determined on that particular day. It is his day, revealed even to the Old Testament saints. We therefore, I say, must not wait in tarrying meetings, either in company or else alone. Well, what then do we do? Well, let me summarize it like this.

Search the scriptures. Search the scriptures for the promises. These exceeding great and precious promises that Peter talks about. Realize, my dear friend, what God means you to have and what he offers you. Do you remember how Paul puts it in the third chapter of this great Epistle? This is what he's praying, he says, for these people. He says that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that he being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge. You and I are meant to know something about that. This love of Christ to you is something that passes knowledge. Do you know it? But you're meant to know it. Well therefore, I say, read these scriptures. And as you read the scriptures, say, "That's meant for me. I'm meant to know this. Christ loves me in that way. I believe it, but I've never known it, I've never experienced it, but I'm meant to do so." Well, very well, having read this, you say, "Well now I ought to have this, I ought to know this." And it stimulates your prayer. So we search the scriptures. We read them diligently. We spend more and more time with the scriptures.

And then the next thing is this: Make sure that you're seeking the right thing. Don't seek experiences as such. Don't don't seek for phenomena, particularly. What then are we to seek? Well, what I've just been telling you. We are to seek him. We are to seek to know him. We are to seek to know his love. He means us to. It's almost insulting to him not to seek him. He has done all this for us in order that we might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. Seek him, seek the knowledge of him, seek his righteousness, seek his holiness. Seek that and you'll never go astray. But if you seek ecstasies and visions and feelings, well you'll probably have them, but they may well be counterfeit. Seek him and you can't go wrong.

Then the next thing to do, of course, is to do all we can to prepare the way. Mortify therefore your members which are on the earth. We must be cleansed and cleanse ourselves if this loving guest is to enter in. Mortify therefore your members. Get rid of sin. Purify your hearts. Get rid, says Paul, of all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit. Purify your hands, you double-minded, says James. They all say it. And again, take Peter in that first chapter of that second Epistle. Add to your faith virtue, and so on. That's the way he says, a man who doesn't do this is short-sighted. He doesn't see far off. He doesn't realize that he has been purged from his old sins. But if you do these things, you'll make your calling and election sure, and an abundant entry shall be ministered unto you into the everlasting kingdom of God. That's the way to do it. Make your calling and election sure. Forsake sin, eschew evil, turn your back upon it.

And then positively, as I've just been reminding you, put into practice that list of things which the apostle Peter there exhorts us to do. "Add to your faith," you remember, virtue. And to virtue, knowledge, and to knowledge, temperance, and to temperance, patience, and to patience, godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, charity or love. And we've got to do all this. You see, Peter is asking us to do it. He doesn't just say go to a meeting and wait and receive it by faith. You've got to add, furnish your faith, fill it out with. Bring these other things into it. Labor at it, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. That's what it all means. And we've got to do all this. If you read the lives of all those great men of God whose experiences I've read to you, you will find they all did this. They were all men who labored in reading the scriptures and trying to understand them. They purified their lives by self-examination and mortification of the flesh. You read the biographies of Whitfield and Wesley and Jonathan Edwards and John Fletcher of Madeley and others. And you'll find these men gave themselves to spiritual exercises. They didn't just go and sit in meetings and look at somebody else doing something, and waiting for an ex They gave themselves to it.

And all this of course leads inevitably to prayer. You must pray for it. I like Thomas Goodwin's word here, "Seal him for it," he says. "Seal him for it, give him no rest nor peace." Shall I suggest to you how it should be done? I've got here the translation of a hymn, two verses of a hymn, alas, not in our hymn book and translated from a language with which most of you are not familiar. "Speak, I pray thee, gentle Jesus. Oh, how passing sweet thy word. Breathing on my troubled spirit peace, which never earth affords. All the world's distracting vices, all the enticing tones of ill, at thine accents mild, melodious, are subdued, and all is still. Tell me, thou art mine, oh Savior. Grant me an assurance clear. Banish all my dark misgivings, still my doubting. Calm my fear. Oh, my soul within me yearns now to hear thy voice divine. So shall grief be gone forever, and despair no more be mine." That's the way. Offer up that prayer to him until he's answered it. "Tell me thou art mine, oh Savior. Grant me an assurance clear." Has he granted you that? Has he whispered to you, has he spoken to you? "Speak, I pray thee, gentle Jesus." Do you know anything about that? All the world's distracting vices, all its enticing tones of ill, at thine accents mild, melodious are subdued, and all is still. Pray for it, seek it. Be desperate for it, hunger and thirst for it. Keep on until your prayer is answered. Take time in other words. Take time. Not only take time to be holy, but take time to seek this sealing with the Spirit. Keep on with it. Keep on, never cease. And this will be your experience one day, "Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings." "It is the Lord who rises with healing in his wings." When you least expected it. You know, the lives, the testimony of the saints throughout the centuries are all agreed in saying this, that God tends to do this for us at certain special times. Sometimes when a man's got to go through a very great trial, God gives him this just before it. How kind is our God? What a loving father. When he knows that something is going to come to you that will test you to the very bottom of your being, he just grants you this blessed assurance before it comes, so that you can go through with it. But you know, sometimes he does it after a period of apparent desertion. That's what that hymn I've just quoted tells you. "Sometimes a light surprises the Christian when he sings." It was after a time when the fig tree wasn't blossoming and blooming, and everything was bare. When all had gone wrong, suddenly the light breaks and he speaks and he whispers his love to us and gives us the white stone with the new name and feeds us on the hidden manna. And lastly, there have been large numbers of Christian people in this world who have only had this just before their death. They've all agreed in saying this, that it was their own ignorance that had prevented their having it earlier. They hadn't sought it. Many of them have been good men. They've lived a Christian life and have been used of God, many of them. But they just never heard his accents mild, melodious. He'd never whispered to their own individual, secret heart. They'd longed for it in a sense, but not truly. They hadn't sought it as they should have done. But here face to face with the end, they've sought it with a new intensity and he's heard them and he's spoken to them. There have been many such. God has granted them this blessed direct assurance. Just before he took them to himself.

Well, I say, seek it. Be satisfied with nothing less. Has he told you that you were his child? Have you heard his voice? Has he spoken to you? Not with an audible voice. It's much more real than that in a sense. It comes, I say, with this illumination, with this melting quality, and you just feel you're lifted up and illuminated, and you're beyond, you've never known anything like it. It's an absolute certainty. Have you known it? Have you had it? If not, I say, seek it. Cry out to him, "Speak, I pray thee, gentle Jesus," and go on until he speaks. Amen.