Welcome to From the Pulpit.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith and powerful sermons from modern preachers
too.
This week we have A.W. Tozer with
his message, Who is the Holy Spirit and
how can we know him?
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, that ye know him, for he
dwelleth with you and shall be in you.
Verse 26, 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, sometimes
I will use the words the Holy Ghost.
They mean exactly and precisely the same thing.
The old Anglo-Saxon word geist has been
turned into our English ghost, and it means
spirit.
So when we say the Holy Ghost, we're
saying in the old Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan
English the Holy Geist, the Holy Spirit.
So it makes no difference which I say.
I mean the same thing.
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.
Now in more recent times, oh say within
40 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.
A 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 exclaimed to this good Methodist brother
who didn't know the difference between an evangelical
and a modernist.
Now the result of this, of course, has
been, it
isn't important, but I just want to say
it while I'm here, while I have the
time, that I either want God or I
don't mean
to give it respectability.
I either want it all or I don't.
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
it all.
That the great woe is not the presence
of religious toys and trifles, but the necessity
for them that 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, whenever 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.
And I said this in our church in
the south side of Chicago.
Suddenly, in an impulse, I said, there are
churches so completely out of the hands of
God that if the Holy Ghost withdrew from
them, they wouldn't sign it out for three
months.
And then the next day or so afterward,
a telephone rang, and a woman's voice said,
Mr. Tozer, I am not a member of
your church, I'm a member of the church.
Now I want to ask who is the
Holy Spirit.
That's the subject for tonight.
We're on the
beaten track.
You know how trouble is.
A fellow came to church one time, a
fine-looking fellow, but obviously wasn't too well
-educated.
He said, Father Tozer, he said, I'm a
fundamentalist, evangelical Christian, but I confess I'm getting
sick and weary of all these religious cliches
that I hear.
He meant cliches, of course.
And these religious cliches that we have, these
cliches, just are repeating the same old cliché,
old cliché, old cliché, old cliché, old cliché,
old clich over and over again.
Well, one of the things I do is
not do that.
And some people are startled and want to
never come back, but others come to see
this great sign.
You can
pick a thing up and bounce it around,
that matters.
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, yes, 1
Corinthians, about the no man knowing the things
of God save the spirit of the man.
No man knoweth the things of a man
save the spirit of the man that's in
him.
No man knoweth the spirit 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 get worked up over a song
until they're actually sent.
You know, they get sent just by a
song.
And they imagine that's the spirit.
Not necessarily, because those same people, a lot
of them, go out and live just like
the world.
And he has all the...
And he has feeling, and he has knowledge,
and sympathy, and ability to love.
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 matters.
He is personality.
He is individuality.
He has intelligence, and love, and 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.
And if he's in your home as a
guest, and you suddenly turn on him, of
course, you'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.
And then there is another creed that was,
oh, 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 Arias 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 any 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.
Well, now,
not only, not only do the historic Church
say that the Holy Spirit is God, but
the Scriptures say that the Holy Spirit is
God.
The Scripture says that
whither shall I go from thyself?
He has given me
life.
There we have the breath, the breath, the
ghost, 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, but
I want to ask you, if
he just wasn't God, as some people say,
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, and 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, there'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 you're up rising and you're 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 present 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, you
know, 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 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 like 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 I did it,
but I think I do.
Because there's nothing sweeter and softer in all
the world than the top of a little
bald 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 people.
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, we're walking quietly down the
aisle, there wouldn't be anybody run from Jesus,
nobody.
They came to him.
Others 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 Frederick Nietzsche, that spirit
he was demonstrating, that's the way the Spirit
is.
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 an example.
How long can I preach, brother?
Hmm?
I don't want to take all your time.
It's 18 after.
I should be through in another five minutes,
shouldn't I?
Well, I said was friendly.
I 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 didn't happen with our six.
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 you know how
you'd feel about it?
You'd be sorry for the other boy, 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 didn't know.
A 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 the 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 until
he takes over, then there will be life,
and we can live upon a different level
altogether.
Do you believe that?
Oh, it's so, my 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?
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 lady's
aide and a Sunday school, and you get
all organized, and I believe in organization, I'm
not against it, I'm for it.
You 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, to this kind of preaching, having your
own church is going to do one of
two things.
It's going to bring your action from it,
in which case, as I said to somebody,
I came, and I can go again.
Or, there is 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 we now
have.
So we're going to seek God together these
nights.
Next week, come back and tell the people
about it, and 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 all night after night to
develop this and show finally how to do
taking this down.
They want to know when to start.
You've been listening to From the Pulpit.
This week you heard A.W. Tozer with
his message, Who is the Holy Spirit and
How Can We Know Him?
Tune in next week for another powerful message
from God's Word on From the Pulpit.