THE FAMILY LIKENESS.

NO. 3483

PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28TH, 1915.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

ON THURSDAY EVENING SEPT. 28TH, 1870.

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” — Romans 8:14.

WE shall do well to notice how much in this chapter is ascribed to the Holy Spirit. It is a chapter full of all God things, most instructive and consolatory; but perhaps one of its most notable points is this, that it so greatly magnifies the Holy Spirit. You observe in the second verse how it describes his gifts — that holy liberty which we now have from our former bondage — “the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made one free from the law of sin and death.” Then further on, in the sixth verse, it virtually ascribes all our true life to the same power, for it is the Spirit who worketh in us a spiritual mind, and the Apostle tells us that “to be spiritually-minded is life and peace.” The quickening of the body is, in the eleventh verse, ascribed to the same agency, “He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Meanwhile the true living that we have even here is traced to that same Spirit, “If ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” No holy life is there, except as through the Spirit, sin is mortified. In the sixteenth verse the Spirit is described as being “a witness with our spirit” that we are born of God. How many gracious offices does he undertake for us! And as if that were not enough, in the twenty-sixth verse he is spoken of as “helping our infirmities” in prayer, teaching us what we should pray for as we ought, and “making intercession for us, or in us, according to the will of God.” I am afraid we don’t render that honor to the blessed Spirit which he deserves. Our ministry is not deficient, I trust, in magnifying the Christ of God; but too often the Holy Spirit is not sufficiently honored, and perhaps this may be some reason why he doth not so many mighty works in the Christian Church as he did at first. This is the dispensation of the Spirit. He dwelleth in us; he dwells in the Church. Let us honor him; let us grieve him no more, but put ourselves beneath his guidance and wait for his blessing. Our text ascribes to the Holy Spirit leading. Those who have been quickened and made to live, and introduced, therefore, into the family of God, have one mark, one never-failing mark. They all have it, and none others ever have it. As many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God, and all who are the sons of God are led by the Spirit of God.

Now it is to this leading of the Spirit rather than to the sonship, and all the blessed beings that come out of that, that I shall direct your attention at this time. And we shall notice first: —

I. What Is Intended By A Man’s Being Led Of The Spirit.

Every man is led by some spirit. There is an evil spirit in the world, and it leads the mass of mankind. He who saith, “I am free and led by none,” is led by the spirit of pride and self-conceit. Under some form or another, the human mind subjects itself to some spiritual sway; and here we are told that those who are the sons of God are undistinguished by this — that the leadership under which they move is that of the Holy Spirit. I take this to mean, first, that the Holy Spirit becomes the governing principle of our life. Years ago we were led of the Spirit from the wilderness of our natural state. We had been called under the preaching of the Word, but vain were those calls. The Holy Spirit came, and then the call of the preacher became an effectual call to our own souls. The first active grace we ever exercised was by the leading of the Holy Spirit. We were then for the first time recognised as the children of God, because then also for the first time we yielded ourselves up to the leadership of the Holy Ghost. And mark, from that day to this, every act of ours that has been heavenward, every thought of ours that has been towards God and his Christ, has been under the leadership of that same Spirit. He who gave us at first to live has kept us alive. He who guided our tottering footsteps to the cross-foot, and there sealed our pardon, has led us along every step of the way, up every hill of difficulty, and down every valley of humiliation, even until this moment; and so it must be until we reach our journey’s end. There may be steps in that journey, alas! that it should be so! in which we are not led of the Spirit, but depart from under his power for a while, and the flesh becomes dominant. Oh! that those steps might never be thought of except with bitter regret and humiliation of spirit. But in every true step onward and heavenward between here and the pearl-gate we shall be led by the Spirit of God. We run when he draws; we are active when he makes us active. He makes us willing in the day of his power, and then we work with him because he worketh in us here to will and to do of his own good pleasure. Now, beloved, you may judge whether you are the sons of God then by asking yourselves this question, “Am I under the influence of the blessed Spirit? Has be led me from darkness into light — from self to the Savior? and has he continued to lead me onward and upward in the divine life, and am I leaning upon him for all future power with which I shall fulfill my pilgrimage till I come to the celestial city?”

But opening up a little further this leadership, I would observe that when a man is said to be led, there are four things implied in the thought. The first one is very apparent, namely, guidance. If I select a pilot, I accept him to steer the vessel. If, on a dark moorland, I accept a guide who knows the way, I do not pretend to know it myself, but I put myself exactly under his guidance. It is so with the child of God. He does not know. What he thinks he knows is usually his folly, if it be knowledge that has not been given to him by the Holy Spirit. But he who is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit takes Christ to be unto him wisdom, and expects to receive this wisdom through the Holy Spirit taking of the things of Christ and revealing them unto him. He is not a teacher, but a disciple: he is not himself a guide, but one who is guided. He has put himself into the hands of another. Self-will does not believe this. Self-love is disgusted with the thought. I may, therefore, ask you, beloved, Do you accept the Holy Spirit’s guidance? Do you desire to be led, not according to your own will, but according to the will of the Most High? Are you desirous that the prayer of your Master should be your prayer, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt”? Guidance — we must accept that, or we are not led by him.

But in the second place, there is drawing as well as guidance; for oftentimes when a person is led, especially if it be a weaker led by a stronger, there is a general impulse. I accept the map as my guide, but the map is not my leader. A leader gives me some degree of strength. He operates upon me gently and sweetly — impels me in the direction in which he would have me go. There is a great difference between a guide and a leader; but still there is a measure of power given by a leader who leads in the way. And oh! brethren, I am sure you, who know anything about the experience of children of God, will feel that you have not only had light from the blessed Spirit to show you the way, but you have had life and power to help you to run in the way, else you would have known the right, but you would never have followed it — you would have seen the way of God’s commandments, but you would never have run in them, unless he, the blessed Spirit, had enlarged your heart. If there be obedience to the light received, that obedience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Not merely the knowledge and the acquiescence in the knowledge of God’s will, but the power to carry out that will comes from him, and from him only. Now I think we may say that, in leading, there is something more than guidance — drawing.

There comes in yet a third point. Under the idea of leadership is that of government. Moses was the leader of the children of Israel through the wilderness. He was, as a leader, their ruler; and if the idea of government does not always attach to being led, yet it certainly does in this case. The Holy Spirit will never guide us along a road in which we claim to be his equal, in which we claim to be still free, and to have no authority above us. He is the spirit’s regent, the Lord and Governor within the soul of every man in whom he resides, and on whom he bestows his guidance. I will ask thee, my dear brother, whether thou dost not acknowledge this to be the fact. Thou art often rebellious against the Spirit, and thou dost often grieve him, but still, for all that, thy heart desires — thy renewed heart desires — fully to submit to the Holy Ghost. I feel in my own heart a longing to be sensitive to every impulse of the blessed Spirit, to feel his breath not only when he comes like a hurricane, but also when he comes as a gentle zephyr. I would desire to be moved by the Spirit’s faintest wish, and to have my soul cognisant of the Spirit’s work within — pliable, malleable, so as to be easily moulded, plastic beneath his divine touch; and you are not led by the Spirit unless it be your wish — unless you put yourself under his government as well as under his guidance.

And fourthly, this being led implies acquiescence in the government, and in the guidance, and in the drawing; for a person is not led unless he acquiesces in the drawing, and runs when he is drawn. The Spirit of God never violates the free agency of man. It has been commonly laid to the charge of those who preach Calvinistic doctrine that we make it out that man is passive, and that the will is nowhere. I do not know who may have said so, but certainly the master theologians of our school have always endeavored carefully to show that the Holy Spirit works in us to will and to do, yet never so as to treat man as if he were not a free agent. God does not deal with man as with blocks of wood or stone. He deals with men as men. He has his will with them — his sovereign and ever blessed will, but he does not violate their will. There is a casket: it is locked. Anon, it is opened. Now he that made that casket opens it with a key, and does not violate the lock, nor even the most delicate ward of the lock. It is only the thief that comes with his crowbar, and rifles it, and violates its constitution. And so God knows how to put spiritual life, and grace, and obedience into the human heart without destroying the fact that it was a human heart, and that it had a free choice. He makes us willing in the day of his power. It is not that the day of his of God, but rather have a ringing in their ears, or a whispering in their heads, but nothing more. How does the Spirit of God then, lead his people?

I would reply, first of all, by the Word. This is the “more sure word of testimony, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed as unto a lamp that shineth in a dark place.” If any man would know the will of God by the Spirit, let him come to the Word that is written here — let him search this to know what is God’s mind, for “holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Spirit.” We are not to expect new revelation. The old is perfect and complete. There is a curse pronounced upon whosoever should add to it or take from it. Let us accept it as the complete mind of God so far, at any rate, as he sees fit to reveal it to us. The Holy Spirit speaks to us through the Word. But it is not through the bare letter of the word, for in this he doth not always speak. Many an eye hath glanced over the Word, and seen none of the mind of the Spirit there. Ay, and many an eye of a true believer, too, has read and read again, and missed the glory of the passage, so that the Spirit does not always speak through the Word to us, or through the same word to the same person at all times; but he sheds a light over a certain part of the chapter, he illuminates it, lights it up, and then puts it to our souls with power; and those that are Bereans, and search the Scripture, shall come upon choice passages, words that shall make their hearts burn within them, texts that shall leap out of the page and embrace them, and whisper in their ear sweet loving words, and kiss them with the kisses of Christ’s lips over again. It is in the Word, opened up of the Spirit, that we get his joy and guidance. Sometimes that will occur under the preaching of the gospel when the Lord gives to his servants power to speak his mind, and they are his mouth. Then it is that hearts made ready “receive with meekness the engrafted Word,” and hearts are guided, and led, and directed. It may not be, however, by any minister; it may be by the words read in some book in connection with an explanation, or it may be the Word itself, which, for some peculiar reason unknown to us (the work of the Spirit of God), may appear to us to be more full of meaning than ever it was before. “But,” saith one, “I perceive that we learn God’s mind, and are led by the Word of God as thus illuminated by the Holy Spirit. But suppose there are certain difficulties, and I should want to know what is the proper course, how and in what way shall I learn the mind of the Spirit?” Brother, God does not treat us now altogether as little children, and give us, by Urim and Thummim, this or that direction; but he treats us as in a spiritual dispensation, somewhat more advanced than were his people under the legal types and ceremonies. And he does not say, “This is the way: walk ye in it,” in so many words, but he does just this — if you distrust your own, wisdom, go to him in prayer, and ask his guidance. You shall then take the question and consider it. That very consideration will be a help to you to go rightly, for haste is usually unwisdom. That consideration shall of itself assist you, and you will then look at it in this light. If there be anything untruthful, then I cannot touch that. If there is anything unholy, then I cannot touch that; if my motive for such a course is purely selfish, then I feel I cannot do that. But if it is a path of wisdom consistent with truth, and righteousness, and the glory of God, then, at any rate, it is not closed to me; and if there be two of the like kind and here the difficulty will be — I will now go to God again and ask him to do something over and above what he ordinarily does through his Word, namely, direct me either by some providential circumstance, or by some advice that shall be tendered to me by a Christian friend, or by some direct impulse upon my will to make me do that which he would have me to do. Very few — none, I will venture to say — have ever gone wrong when they have thus consulted God and desired to be led aright. Something has occurred which has drifted them from the path they have chosen, and has drifted them into the path that they would have chosen had they been possessed of the wisdom of the infinite. Strangely, too, minds have been impelled to courses that did not seem to be wise, but they have turned out to be wise when those minds have humbly followed what they believed to be the impulse of the Holy Spirit; but I am persuaded there are many occasions in a Christian’s life when, if he waits upon God, God will as distinctly move and guide him as ever he did the prophets of old, and there shall be direct communication between the Holy Ghost and the believer’s soul. I am sure, unless I have been fearfully deceived, that I have often felt the motions of God’s Spirit in that particular form. I have been enabled to obey them, and I here confess that, whenever any project has been carried out by this church and it has been successful, whenever we have attempted any new work for God, if anyone has said that I was wise in having suggested it, I can only reply that I never took the initiative. I have been the creature of the circumstances that God has put around me; I have been led and driven by a power superior to mine before which I have bowed; and if there has been any success resting upon the course I have followed, it is because I have waited always to be guided, and have never wished to go before the cloud. And you shall find that every man whose life has been happy before God will tell you that if at any moment there has been the wrong and the unhappiness, it has been when he has not sought counsel, and has been his own master, instead of waiting upon the Most High. I speak thus of myself only, for one knows one’s own course best, and can speak with authority there; and sometimes the example of one Christian may be a help to others. Wait on the Lord and keep his way, and he will establish you in due time. He has not closed the door of his counsel, but still will direct his people. Jesus is to this day the Wonderful, the Counsellor, and you may seek guidance at his hands, and find it too.

And now, once again, what are the excellencies of being under such a leadership? They are very many. It supplies a great need. We are as sheep going astray, and astray we shall always go till a good shepherd leads us. It is ennobling to have such a leader. Every man under a leader participates in some degree in the honor-ableness of him that leads him. How sweet it is to feel that the Holy Spirit leads you! The greatest and wisest of men, Solomon himself — well, one would feel honor by sitting at the feet of so wise a man, but oh! the honor of being guided by the Spirit of God! The poor woman whom Cowper describes: —

“Yon cottager who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store,
Who knew — and knew no more — her Bible true.”

and who waited upon God each day for guidance, was nobler far than Voltaire, who did guide himself, but who guided himself into a maze of doubt and darkness. Put thy little hand into the hand of the great Father of all spirits, whose wisdom is infinite, and the compact ennobles thee.

And how elevating it is to be led of the Spirit. To be led of the world is grovelling, to be led of ambition is a poor foolish thing, to be led of the noblest of human spirits is, after all, only to rise to the level of man. But to be led by God! He never lowers the tone of thought in us, but elevates us, and makes even our commonest actions to be divine, seeing they are done in his might. O dear brethren, if we are led of the Spirit of God, we are as high as the angels are in heaven, ay, higher than they, for unto none of them has he said that they are the sons of God. “Those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”

Let us add how safe this guidance is. There are no errings where, he leads: all our mistakes are ours. Our blunders in doctrine, and our follies in life, and our divergences from the paths of peace — these are our own. If we would but follow him, our life would be clean, and pure, and perfect.

And how blessed it is to have him for a leader! What happiness it gives! He comforts, he enlightens, he instructs, he sanctifies. To be near to him is to be near to heaven. To be completely under his guidance is to be perpetually happy. Oh! happy people, whose God is the Lord, and whose leader is the Holy Ghost! And now in closing, perhaps there are some here who will say: —

IV. “How Can I Obtain This Blessing Of Being Led Of The Spirit Of God?”

The answer is, first, dear brother, thou must have the Spirit of God. No man is led of the Spirit till he has the Spirit. “Ye must be born again.” Unrenewed men cannot he led by the Spirit. He does never lead the flesh: it is enmity against God, and can never be otherwise. The old nature, it is not possible even for the Holy Ghost to lead. It would perpetually turn to lust.

There must be a new nature. The Holy Spirit must create us anew in Christ Jesus: we must have the Spirit, or else we cannot be led by him. It is your difficulty, then, O unrenewed men and women, that you must have the Spirit of God, or else vain will be your prayer to be led by the Spirit of God. The blessing is that he is already given to as many of you as believe in the name of Jesus Christ, and this evening, if you have never believed before, may you be led to trust in the Son of God. But you must have the Spirit before you can be led by the Spirit. If again you say, “But how can I obtain this blessing?” I would say, “Distrust yourself now.” Up to this good hour you have been a self-made man — you have believed in self-reliance. There is some truth in that in a certain sense, but as before the living God there is no man who is less a man than he who trusts himself. You shall be as cursed as the heath in the desert which seeth not when good cometh. Your strength shall, by and by, utterly fail you. You are not wise, though yourself whispers to you that you are; the fact that you believe you are wise proves that you are a fool. Can you believe this? — it is a part of the work of the gospel to make you empty. You cannot be full till you are. You cannot be led of the Spirit till you are willing to be led, and that will never be till, first of all, you see that you want leading. Oh! may he come and convince you of your folly, of your wandering, of your ignorance, and then laid low at his dear feet, Jesus Christ shall give you of his Spirit, and lead you in the way of his salvation. May this distrust happen to you to-night, if it never has done so before. Then if you would still be guided, but feel that you are not led of the Spirit, I would say to you, dear brother, consult the Word of God more than you do. If you have the Spirit, but don’t feel that you are led by him, but that, with desires to do right, you are often wrong, be a greater searcher of the Word of God. This is not the age in which the Bible is much read. I suppose there are more Bibles in England than any other book, but there are fewer Bible readers probably than of any other book; and yet the Bible readers are more numerous than the Bible searchers. I hardly remember a passage that bids you read, but I do remember a passage that says, “Search the Scriptures.” May we become students of the Word, desirous to know the meaning, and then we shall feel the Spirit of God instructing us through the Word, and we shall be led by him.

And add to this reading of the Scriptures abundant prayer. Again must I sorrow that there is so little prayer among, us. God grant that prayer-meetings may begin to be better attended, and that family prayer may be more regarded, and that private prayer may be more diligently and more spiritually maintained. We shall not be led as a church and as individuals by the Spirit of God if we got out of his way, and neglect his Word, and neglect to draw near to him in prayer. What is the reason why there are so many sects in the world? Surely it must be because we don’t follow the guidance of the Spirit of God. If we followed the Word of God and the will of God in all things, we should be very much more alike than we are. I do not think that even then we should all run in the same groove, for the road to heaven may be sufficiently wide to have several different paths in it, and vet shall they all be in the same way and in the same road. But the great divergencies — surely they must have come from this, that the Church did not want to be guided by the Spirit; she did not go to the Spirit’s book, nor go to the throne of grace to be guided; she followed first this saint and then the other, this learned doctor and then the other, and to this day you shall hear debatings about all sorts of methods of working and human authorities as if that were of any consequence at all. What has that to do with religion? This book, the Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants. And you shall have thrown before you the tenets of Independency, and the minutes of the Wesleyan Conference, or some dogma of close communion or open communion of the Baptist Church. To the dogs with it all! What matters it all — what rules and regulations we may pass? The Word of God and the Spirit of God only should have power in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, and happy will the day be when we shall dash down everything traditional, however venerable it may be; when we shall tear to pieces and utterly abhor all that came of wise, and learned, and good men, if it were contrary to the mind of the Spirit of God. I would that all Christians more fully in this respect we are willing to be led by the Spirit of God. But, beloved brethren, there are some Christian people who don’t want to know too much of their Master’s will. There are some awkward texts in the Bible that some people don’t like to read, because they know that certain learned doctors did not square them somehow or other with their creed, but that it was rather a twist and a squeeze, and they feel it was rather a wrench to the text, and so they don’t often read it. And certain ordinances too. Many Christian people have got certain beliefs and traditions about them, but they never come to the Book Of God to see what that says. And so with every ordinance, whatever it may be — baptism, confirmation, auricular confession — what you will, if the Spirit of God has not taught it, we know nothing of it. But are we willing, all of us all round now, to learn what the Spirit of God would teach us, honestly and truly? Can all of us say, to whatever creed we belong, “I am a disciple at the feet of Jesus, and I desire to submit all my belief entirely to the instructions of the divine spirit”? We ought to say this, and must, or we lack one mark of being the sons of God; and when all through the Christian Church this shall be the spirit there will come a fusing — a separating between the precious and the vile, a casting away of all old beliefs and old traditions. I do not believe for a moment that the Church will come to believe as I believe, or as you believe, my dear brother. You will have something wrong to give up, and I shall have something wrong to give up. We ought to desire to give up everything which is wrong, and to learn everything which we do not know yet to be the truth, and which is the truth; and may we all be brought there, kept there, held there; led by the Spirit, not tethered down by a creed, not tied hand and foot by a certain commentary, not made to say, “There, that is all I ever will believe under any circumstances,” but led by the Spirit through his Word, and through the enlightenment which he is sure to give to as many as put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh! that the sinner here were led to resign himself now to the Holy Spirit’s will, for he would lead him to the cross at once! The Holy Ghost never leads a man into self-righteousness, never leads him to put his trust in sacraments, but leads him right away to the feet of Jesus. May the Holy Spirit there guide you and all of us, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.