Teaching Resources International

The Holy Spirit’s Intercession by C. H. Spurgeon

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” Romans 8:26, 27

The Apostle Paul was writing to a tried and afflicted people, and one of his objects was to remind them of the rivers of comfort which were flowing near at hand.  He first of all stirred up their pure minds by way of remembrance as to their sonship, for saith he “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”  They were, therefore, encouraged to take part and lot with Christ, the elder brother, with whom they had become joint heirs; and they were exhorted to suffer with him, that they might afterwards be glorified with him.  All that they endured came from a Father’s hand, and this should comfort them.  A thousand sources of joy are opened in that one blessing of adoption.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have been begotten into the family of grace.

When Paul had alluded to that consoling subject, he turned to the next ground of comfort—namely, that we are to be sustained under present trial by hope.  There is an amazing glory in reserve for us, and though as yet we cannot enter upon it, but in harmony with the whole creation must continue to groan and travail, yet the hope itself should minister strength to us, and enable us patiently to bear “these light afflictions, which are but for a moment.”  This also is a truth full of sacred refreshment: hope sees a crown in reserve, mansions in readiness, and Jesus himself preparing a place for us, and by the rapturous sight she sustains the soul under the sorrows of the hour.  Hope is the grand anchor by whose means we ride out the present storm.

The apostle then turns to a third source of comfort, namely, the abiding of the Holy Spirit in and with the Lord’s people.  He uses the word “likewise” to intimate that in the same manner as hope sustains the soul, so does the Holy Spirit strengthen us under trial.  Hope operates spiritually upon our spiritual faculties, and so does the Holy Spirit, in some mysterious way, divinely operate upon the new-born faculties of the believer, so that he is sustained under his infirmities.  In his light shall we see light: I pray, therefore, that we may be helped of the Spirit while we consider his mysterious operations, that we may not fall into error or miss precious truth through blindness of heart.

The text speaks of “our infirmities,” or as many translators put it in the singular, “of our infirmity.”  By this is intended our affliction, and the weakness which trouble discovers in us.  The Holy Spirit helps us to bear the infirmity of our body and of our mind; he helps us to bear our cross, whether it be physical pain, or mental depression, or spiritual conflict, or slander, or poverty, or persecution.  He helps our infirmity; and with a helper so divinely strong we need not fear for the result.  God’s grace will be sufficient for us; his strength will be made perfect in weakness.

I think, dear friends, you will all admit that if a man can pray, his trouble is at once lightened.  When we feel that we have power with God and can obtain anything we ask for at his hands, then our difficulties cease to oppress us.  We take our burden to our heavenly Father and tell it out in the accents of childlike confidence, and we come away quite content to bear whatever his holy will may lay upon us.  Prayer is a great outlet for grief; it draws up the sluices, and abates the swelling flood, which else might be too strong for us.  We bathe our wound in the lotion of prayer, and the pain is lulled, the fever is removed.

But the worst of it is that in certain conditions of heart we cannot pray.  We may be brought into such perturbation of mind, and perplexity of heart, that we do not know how to pray.  We see the mercy-seat, and we perceive that God will hear us: we have no doubt about that, for we know that we are his own favored children, and yet we hardly know what to desire.  We fall into such heaviness of spirit, and entanglement of thought, that the one remedy of prayer, which we have always found to be unfailing, appears to be taken from us.  Here, then, in the nick of time, as a very present help in time of trouble, comes in the Holy Spirit.  He draws near to teach us how to pray, and in this way he helps our infirmity, relieves our suffering, and enables us to bear the heavy burden without fainting under the load.

At this time our subjects for consideration shall be, firstly, the help which the Holy Spirit gives: secondly, the prayers which he inspires; and thirdly, the success which such prayers are certain to obtain.

I. First, then, let us consider THE HELP WHICH THE HOLY GHOST GIVES.

The help which the Holy Ghost renders to us meets the weakness which we deplore.  As I have already said, if in time of trouble a man can pray, his burden loses its weight.  If the believer can take anything and everything to God, then he learns to glory in infirmity and to rejoice in tribulation; but sometimes we are in such confusion of mind that we know not what we should pray for as we ought.  In a measure, through our ignorance, we never know what we should pray for until we are taught of the Spirit of God, but there are times when this beclouding of the soul is dense indeed, and we do not even know what would help us out of our trouble if we could obtain it.  We see the disease, but the name of the medicine is not known to us.  We look over the many things which we might ask for of the Lord, and we feel that each of them would be helpful, but that none of them would precisely meet our case.  For spiritual blessings which we know to be according to the divine will we could ask with confidence, but perhaps these would not meet our peculiar circumstances.

There are other things for which we are allowed to ask, but we scarcely know whether, if we had them, they would really serve our turn, and we also feel a diffidence as to praying for them.  In praying for temporal things, we plead with measured voices, ever referring our petition for revision to the will of the Lord.  Moses prayed that he might enter Canaan, but God denied him; and the man that was healed asked our Lord that he might he with him, but he received for answer,” Go home to thy friends.”  We pray evermore on such matters with this reserve, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  At times, this very spirit of resignation appears to increase our mental difficulty, for we do not wish to ask for anything that would be contrary to the mind of God, and yet we must ask for something.  We are reduced to such straits that we must pray, but what shall be the particular subject of prayer we cannot for a while make out.

Even when ignorance and perplexity are removed, we know not what we should pray for “as we ought.”  When we know the matter of prayer, we yet fail to pray in a right manner. We ask, but we are afraid that we shall not have, because we do not exercise the thought, or the faith, which we judge to be essential to prayer.  We cannot at times command even the earnestness which is the life of supplication: a torpor steals over us, our heart is chilled, our hand is numbed, and we cannot wrestle with the angel.  We know what to pray for as to objects, but we do not know what to pray for “as we ought.”  It is the manner of the prayer which perplexes us, even when the matter is decided upon.  How can I pray?  My mind wanders: I chatter like a crane; I roar like a beast in pain; I moan in the brokenness of my heart, but oh, my God, I know not what it is my inmost spirit needs; or if I know it, I know not how to frame my petition aright before thee.  I know not how to open my lips in thy majestic presence: I am so troubled that I cannot speak.  My spiritual distress robs me of the power to pour out my heart before my God.  Now, beloved, it is in such a plight as this that the Holy Ghost aids us with his divine help, and hence he is “a very present help in time of trouble.”

Coming to our aid in our bewilderment, he instructs us. This is one of his frequent operations upon the mind of the believer: “he shall teach you all things.”  He instructs us as to our need, and as to the promises of God which refer to that need.  He shows us where our deficiencies are, what our sins are, and what our necessities are; he sheds a light upon our condition, and makes us feel deeply our helplessness, sinfulness, and dire poverty; and then he casts the same light upon the promises of the Word, and lays home to the heart that very text which was intended to meet the occasion—the precise promise which was framed with foresight of our present distress.  In that light, he makes the promise shine in all its truthfulness, certainty, sweetness, and suitability, so that we, poor trembling sons of men, dare take that word into our mouth which first came out of God’s mouth, and then come with it as an argument, and plead it before the throne of the heavenly grace.  Our prevalence in prayer lies in the plea, “Lord, do as thou hast said.”  How greatly we ought to value the Holy Spirit, because when we are in the dark he gives us light, and when our perplexed spirit is so befogged and beclouded that it cannot see its own need, and cannot find out the appropriate promise in the Scriptures, the Spirit of God comes in and teaches us all things, and brings all things to our remembrance, whatsoever our Lord has told us.  He guides us in prayer, and thus he helps our infirmity.

But the blessed Spirit does more than this, he will often direct the mind to the special subject of prayer. He dwells within us as a counselor, and points out to us what it is we should seek at the hands of God.  We do not know why it is so, but we sometimes find our minds carried as by a strong under current into a particular line of prayer for some one definite object.  It is not merely that our judgment leads us in that direction, though usually the Spirit of God acts upon us by enlightening our judgment, but we often feel an unaccountable and irresistible desire rising again and again within our heart, and this so presses upon us, that we not only utter the desire before God at our ordinary times for prayer, but we feel it crying in our hearts all the day long, almost to the supplanting of all other considerations.  At such times, we should thank God for direction and give our desire a clear road: the Holy Spirit is granting us inward direction as to how we should order our petitions before the throne of grace, and we may now reckon upon good success in our pleadings.  Such guidance will the Spirit give to each of you if you will ask him to illuminate you. He will guide you both negatively and positively.  Negatively, he will forbid you to pray for such and such a thing, even as Paul essayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered him not: and, on the other hand, he will cause you to hear a cry within your soul which shall guide your petitions, even as he made Paul hear the cry from Macedonia, saying, “Come over and help us.”

The Spirit teaches wisely, as no other teacher can do. Those who obey his promptings shall not walk in darkness.  He leads the spiritual eye to take good and steady aim at the very center of the target, and thus we hit the mark in our pleadings.

Nor is this all, for the Spirit of God is not sent merely to guide and help our devotion, but he himself “maketh intercession for us” according to the will of God. By this expression, it cannot be meant that the Holy Spirit ever groans or personally prays; but that he excites intense desire and creates unutterable groanings in us, and these are ascribed to him.  Even as Solomon built the temple because he superintended and ordained all, and yet I know not that he ever fashioned a timber or prepared a stone, so doth the Holy Spirit pray and plead within us by leading us to pray and plead.  This he does by arousing our desires.  The Holy Spirit has a wonderful power over renewed hearts, as much power as the skillful minstrel hath over the strings among which he lays his accustomed hand.  The influences of the Holy Ghost at times pass through the soul like winds through an Eolian harp, creating and inspiring sweet notes of gratitude and tones of desire, to which we should have been strangers if it had not been for his divine visitation.  He knows how to create in our spirit hunger and thirst for good things.  He can arouse us from our spiritual lethargy, he can warm us out of our lukewarmness, he can enable us when we are on our knees to rise above the ordinary routine of prayer into that victorious importunity against which nothing can stand.  He can lay certain desires so pressingly upon our hearts that we can never rest till they are fulfilled.  He can make the zeal for God’s house to eat us up, and the passion for God’s glory to be like a fire within our bones; and this is one part of that process by which in inspiring our prayers he helps our infirmity.  True Advocate is he, and Comforter most effectual.  Blessed be his name.

The Holy Spirit also divinely operates in the strengthening of the faith of believers. That faith is at first of his creating, and afterwards it is of his sustaining and increasing: and oh, brothers and sisters, have you not often felt your faith rise in proportion to your trials?  Have you not, like Noah’s ark, mounted towards heaven as the flood deepened around you?  You have felt as sure about the promise as you felt about the trial.  The affliction was, as it were, in your very bones, but the promise was also in your very heart.  You could not doubt the affliction, for you smarted under it, but you might almost as soon have doubted that you were afflicted as have doubted the divine help, for your confidence was firm and unmoved.  The greatest faith is only what God has a right to expect from us, yet do we never exhibit it except as the Holy Ghost strengthens our confidence, and opens up before us the covenant with all its seals and securities.   He it is that leads our soul to cry, “Though my house be not so with God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure.”  Blessed be the Divine Spirit then, that since faith is essential to prevailing prayer, he helps us in supplication by increasing our faith.  Without faith, prayer cannot speed, for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed, and such an one may not expect anything of the Lord; happy are we when the Holy Spirit removes our wavering, and enables us like Abraham to believe without staggering, knowing full well that he who has promised is able also to perform.

By three figures, I will endeavor to describe the work of the Spirit of God in this matter, though they all fall short, and indeed all that I can say must fall infinitely short of the glory of his work.  The actual mode of his working upon the mind we may not attempt to explain; it remains a mystery, and it would be an unholy intrusion to attempt to remove the veil.  There is no difficulty in our believing that as one human mind operates upon another mind, so does the Holy Spirit influence our spirits.  We are forced to use words if we would influence our fellow-men, but the Spirit of God can operate upon the human mind more directly, and communicate with it in silence.  Into that matter, however, we will not dive lest we intrude where our knowledge would be drowned by our presumption.

My illustrations do not touch the mystery, but set forth the grace.  The Holy Spirit acts to his people somewhat as a prompter to a reciter.  A man has to deliver a piece which he has learned; but his memory is treacherous, and therefore somewhere out of sight there is a prompter, so that when the speaker is at a loss and might use a wrong word, a whisper is heard, which suggests the right one.  When the speaker has almost lost the thread of his discourse he turns his ear, and the prompter gives him the catch-word and aids his memory.  If I may be allowed the simile, I would say that this represents in part the work of the Spirit of God in us, suggesting to us the right desire, and bringing all things to our remembrance whatsoever Christ has told us.  In prayer, we should often come to a dead stand, but he incites, suggests, and inspires, and so we go onward.  In prayer, we might grow weary, but the Comforter encourages and refreshes us with cheering thoughts.  When, indeed, we are in our bewilderment almost driven to give up prayer, the whisper of his love drops a live coal from off the altar into our soul, and our hearts glow with greater ardor than before.  Regard the Holy Spirit as your prompter, and let your ear be opened to his voice.

But he is much more than this.  Let me attempt a second simile: he is as an advocate to one in peril at law.  Suppose that a poor man had a great law-suit, touching his whole estate, and he was forced personally to go into court and plead his own cause, and speak up for his rights. If he were an uneducated man, he would be in a poor plight.  An adversary in the court might plead against him, and overthrow him, for he could not answer him.  This poor man knows very little about the law, and is quite unable to meet his cunning opponent.  Suppose one who was perfect in the law should take up his cause warmly, and come and live with him, and use all his knowledge so as to prepare his case for him, draw up his petitions for him, and fill his mouth with arguments.  Would not that be a grand relief?  This counselor would suggest the line of pleading, arrange the arguments, and put them into right courtly language.  When the poor man was baffled by a question asked in court, he would run home and ask his adviser, and he would tell him exactly how to meet the objector.  Suppose, too, that when he had to plead with the judge himself, this advocate at home should teach him how to behave and what to urge, and encourage him to hope that he would prevail.  Would not this be a great boon?  Who would be the pleader in such a case?  The poor client would plead, but still, when he won the suit, he would trace it all to the advocate who lived at home, and gave him counsel: indeed, it would be the advocate pleading for him, even while he pleaded himself.  This is an instructive emblem of a great fact.

Within this narrow house of my body, this tenement of clay, if I be a true believer, there dwells the Holy Ghost, and when I desire to pray I may ask him what I should pray for as I ought, and he will help me.  He will write the prayers which I ought to offer upon the tablets of my heart, and I shall see them there, and so I shall be taught how to plead.  It will be the Spirit’s own self pleading in me, and by me, and through me, before the throne of grace.  What a happy man in his law-suit would such a poor man be, and how happy are you and I that we have the Holy Ghost to be our Counselor!

Yet one more illustration: it is that of a father aiding his boy.  Suppose it to be a time of war centuries back.  Old English warfare was then conducted by bowmen to a great extent.  Here is a youth who is to be initiated in the art of archery, and therefore he carries a bow.  It is a strong bow, and therefore very hard to draw; indeed, it requires more strength than the urchin can summon to bend it.  See how his father teaches him.  “Put your right hand here, my boy, and place your left hand so.  Now pull.”  And as the youth pulls, his father’s hands are on his hands, and the bow is drawn.  The lad draws the bow: ay, but it is quite as much his father, too.  We cannot draw the bow of prayer alone.  Sometimes a bow of steel is not broken by our hands, for we cannot even bend it; and then the Holy Ghost puts his mighty hand over ours, and covers our weakness so that we draw; and lo, what splendid drawing of the bow it is then!  The bow bends so easily we wonder how it is; away flies the arrow, and it pierces the very center of the target, for he who gives the strength directs the aim.  We rejoice to think that we have won the day, but it was his secret might that made us strong, and to him be the glory of it.  Thus have I tried to set forth the cheering fact that the Spirit helps the people of God.

II. Our second subject is THE PRAYER WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT INSPIRES, or that part of prayer which is especially and peculiarly the work of the Spirit of God.  The text says, “The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”  It is not  the Spirit that groans,  but we that groan; but as I have shown you, the Spirit excites the emotion which causes us to groan.

It is clear then the prayers which are incited in us by the Spirit of God are those which arise from our inmost soul.  A man’s heart is moved when he groans.  A groan is a matter about which there is no hypocrisy.  A groan cometh not from the lips, but from the heart.  A groan then is a part of prayer which we owe to the Holy Ghost, and the same is true of all the prayer which wells up from the deep fountains of our inner life.  The prophet cried, “My bowels, my bowels, I am pained at my very heart: my heart makes a noise in me.”  This deep ground-swell of desire, this tidal motion of the life-floods is caused by the Holy Spirit.  His work is never superficial, but always deep and inward.

Such prayers will rise within us when the mind is far too troubled to let us speak.  We know not what we should pray for as we ought, and then it is that we groan, or utter some other inarticulate sound.  Hezekiah said, “like a crane or a swallow did I chatter.”  The psalmist said, “I am so troubled that I cannot speak.”  In another place, he said, “I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart;” but he added, “Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee.”  The sighing of the prisoner surely cometh up into the ears of the Lord.  There is real prayer in these “groanings that cannot be uttered.”  It is the power of the Holy Ghost in us which creates all real prayer, even that which takes the form of a groan because the mind is incapable, by reason of its bewilderment and grief, of clothing its emotion in words.  I pray you never think lightly of the supplications of your anguish.  Rather judge that such prayers are like Jabez, of whom it is written, that “he was more honorable than his brethren, because his mother bare him with sorrow.”  That which is thrown up from the depth of the soul, when it is stirred with a terrible tempest, is more precious than pearl or coral, for it is the intercession of the Holy Spirit.

These prayers are sometimes “groanings that cannot be uttered,” because they concern such great things that they cannot be spoken.  I want, my Lord!  I want, I want; I cannot tell thee what I want; but I seem to want all things.  If it were some little thing, my narrow capacity could comprehend and describe it, but I need all covenant blessings.  Thou knowest what I have need of before I ask thee, and though I cannot go into each item of my need, I know it to be very great, and such as I myself can never estimate. I groan, for I can do no more.  Prayers which are the offspring of great desires, sublime aspirations, and elevated designs are surely the work of the Holy Spirit, and their power within a man is frequently so great that he cannot find expression for them.  Words fail, and even the sighs which try to embody them cannot be uttered.

But it may be, beloved, that we groan because we are conscious of the littleness of our desire, and the narrowness of our faith.  The trial, too, may seem too mean to pray about.  I have known what it is to feel as if I could not pray about a certain matter, and yet I have been obliged to groan about it.  A thorn in the flesh may be as painful a thing as a sword in the bones, and yet we may go and beseech the Lord thrice about it, and getting no answer we may feel that we know not what to pray for as we ought; and yet it makes groan.  Yes, and with that natural groan there may go up an unutterable groaning of the Holy Spirit.

Beloved, what a different view of prayer God has from that which men think to be the correct one.  You may have seen very beautiful prayers in print, and you may have heard very charming compositions from the pulpit, but I trust you have not fallen in love with them.  Judge these things rightly.  I pray you never think well of fine prayers, for before the thrice holy God it ill becomes a sinful suppliant to play the orator.  We heard of a certain clergyman who was said to have given forth “the finest prayer ever offered to a Boston audience.”  Just so!  The Boston audience received the prayer, and there it ended.  We want the mind of the Spirit in prayer, and not the mind of the flesh.  The tail feathers of pride should be pulled out of our prayers, for they need only the wing feathers of faith; the peacock feathers of poetical expression are out of place before the throne of God.  “Dear me, what remarkably beautiful language he used in prayer!”  “What an intellectual treat his prayer was!”

Yes, yes; but God looks at the heart.  To him fine language is as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, but a groan has music in it.  We do not like groans: our ears are much too delicate to tolerate such dreary sounds; but not so the great Father of spirits.  A Methodist brother cries, “Amen,” and you say, “I cannot bear such Methodistic noise.”  No, but if it comes from the man’s heart God can bear it.  When you get upstairs into your chamber this evening to pray, and find you cannot pray, but have to moan out, “Lord, I am too full of anguish and too perplexed to pray, hear thou the voice of my roaring,” though you reach to nothing else you will be really praying.  When like David we can say, “I opened my mouth and panted,” we are by no means in an ill state of mind.  All fine language in prayer, and especially all intoning or performing of prayers, must be abhorrent to God; it is little short of profanity to offer solemn supplication to God after the manner called “intoning.”  The sighing of a true heart is infinitely more acceptable, for it is the work of the Spirit of God.

We may say of the prayers which the Holy Spirit works in us that they are prayers of knowledge.   Notice, our difficulty is that we know not what we should pray for; but the Holy Spirit does know, and therefore he helps us by enabling us to pray intelligently, knowing what we are asking for, so far as this knowledge is needful to valid prayer.  The text speaks of the “mind of the Spirit.”  What a mind that must be!-the mind of that Spirit who arranged all the order which now pervades this earth!  There was once chaos and confusion, but the Holy Spirit brooded over all, and his mind is the originator of that beautiful arrangement which we so admire in the visible creation.  What a mind his must be!  The Holy Spirit’s mind is seen in our intercessions when under his sacred influence we order our case before the Lord, and plead with holy wisdom for things convenient and necessary.  What wise and admirable desires must those be which the Spirit of Wisdom himself works in us!

Moreover, the Holy Spirit’s intercession creates prayers offered in a proper manner.  I showed you that the difficulty is that we know not what we should pray for “as we ought,” and the Spirit meets that difficulty by making intercession for us in a right manner.  The Holy Spirit works in us humility, earnestness, intensity, importunity, faith, and resignation, and all else that is acceptable to God in our supplications.  We know not how to mingle these sacred spices in the incense of prayer.  We, if left to ourselves at our very best, get too much of one ingredient or another, and spoil the sacred compound, but the Holy Spirit’s intercessions have in them such a blessed blending of all that is good that they come up as a sweet perfume before the Lord.  Spirit-taught prayers are offered as they ought to be.  They are his own intercession in some respects, for we read that the Holy Spirit not only helps us to intercede but “maketh intercession.”  It is twice over declared in our text that he maketh intercession for us; and the meaning of this I tried to show when I described a father as putting his hands upon his child’s hands.  This is something more than helping us to pray, something more than encouraging us or directing us.  But I venture no further, except to say that he puts such force of his own mind into our poor weak thoughts and desires and hopes, that he himself maketh intercession for us, working in us to will and to pray according to his good pleasure.

I want you to notice, however, that these intercessions of the Holy Spirit are only in the saints.  “He maketh intercession for us,” and “He maketh intercession for the saints.”  Does he do nothing for sinners, then?  Yes, he quickens sinners into spiritual life, and he strives with them to overcome their sinfulness and turn them into the right way; but in the saints he works with us and enables us to pray after his mind and according to the will of God.  His intercession is not in or for the unregenerate. O, unbelievers you must first be made saints or you cannot feel the Spirit’s intercession within you.  What need we have to go to Christ for the blessing of the Holy Ghost, which is peculiar to the children of God, and can only be ours by faith in Christ Jesus!  “To as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God;” and to the sons of God alone cometh the Spirit of adoption, and all his helping grace.  Unless we are the sons of God the Holy Spirit’s indwelling shall not be ours: we are shut out from the intercession of the Holy Ghost, ay, and from the intercession of Jesus too, for he hath said, “I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me.”

Thus I have tried to show you the kind of prayer which the Spirit inspires.

III. Our third and last point is THE SURE SUCCESS OF ALL SUCH PRAYERS.

All the prayers which the Spirit of God inspires in us must succeed, because, first, there is a meaning in them which God reads and approves.  When the Spirit of God writes a prayer upon a man’s heart, the man himself may be in such a state of mind that he does not altogether know what it is.  His interpretation of it is a groan, and that is all.  Perhaps he does not even get so far as that in expressing the mind of the Spirit, but he feels groanings which he cannot utter, he cannot find a door of utterance for his inward grief.  Yet our heavenly Father, who looks immediately upon the heart, reads what the Spirit of God has indicted there, and does not need even our groans to explain the meaning.  He reads the heart itself: “he knoweth,” says the text, “what is the mind of the Spirit.”  The Spirit is one with the Father, and the Father knows what the Spirit means.

The desires which the Spirit prompts may be too spiritual for such babes in grace as we are actually to describe or to express, and yet they are within us.  We feel desires for things that we should never have thought of if he had not made us long for them; aspirations for blessings which as to the understanding of them are still above us, yet the Spirit writes the desire on the renewed mind, and the Father sees it.  Now that which God reads in the heart and approves of, for the word to “know” in this case includes approval as well as the mere act of omniscience –what God sees and approves of in the heart must succeed.  Did not Jesus say, “Your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of these things before you ask them?”  Did he not tell us this as an encouragement to believe that we shall receive all needful blessings?  So it is with those prayers which are all broken up, wet with tears, and discordant with sighs and inarticulate expressions and heavings of the bosom, and sobbings of the heart and anguish and bitterness of spirit, our gracious Lord reads them as a man reads a book, and they are written in a character which he fully understands.

To give a simple figure: if I were to come into your house I might find there a little child that cannot yet speak plainly.  It cries for something, and it makes very odd and objectionable noises, combined with signs and movements, which are almost meaningless to a stranger, but his mother understands him, and attends to his little pleadings.  A mother can translate baby – talk she comprehends incomprehensible noises.  Even so doth our Father in heaven know all about our poor baby talk, for our prayer is not much better.  He knows and comprehends the cryings, and moanings, and sighings, and chatterings of his bewildered children.  Yea, a tender mother knows her child’s needs before the child knows what it wants.  Perhaps the little one stutters, stammers, and cannot get its words out, but the mother sees what he would say, and takes the meaning.  Even so we know concerning our great Father

“He knows the thoughts we mean to speak,

Ere from our opening lips they break.”

Do you therefore rejoice in this, that because the prayers of the Spirit are known and understood of God, therefore they will be sure to speed.

The next argument for making us sure that they will speed is this – that they are “the mind of the Spirit.”  God the ever blessed is one, and there can be no division between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  These divine persons always work together, and there is a common desire for the glory of each blessed Person of the Divine Unity, and therefore it cannot be conceived without profanity, that anything could be the mind of the Holy Spirit and not be the mind of the Father and the mind of the Son.  The mind of God is one and harmonious; if, therefore, the Holy Spirit dwell in you, and he move you to any desire, then his mind is in your prayer, and it is not possible that the eternal Father should reject your petitions.  That prayer which came from heaven will certainly go back to heaven.  If the Holy Ghost prompts it, the Father must and will accept it, for it is not possible that he should put a slight upon the ever blessed and adorable Spirit.

But one more word, and that closes the argument, namely, that the work of the Spirit in the heart is not only the mind of the Spirit which God knows, but it is also according to the will or mind of God, for he never maketh intercession in us other than is consistent with the divine will.  Now, the divine will or mind may be viewed two ways.  First, there is the will declared in the proclamations of holiness by the Ten Commandments.  The Spirit of God never prompts us to ask for anything that is unholy or inconsistent with the precepts of the Lord.  Then secondly, there is the secret mind of God, the will of his eternal predestination and decree, of which we know nothing; but we do know this, that the Spirit of God never prompts us to ask anything which is contrary to the eternal purpose of God.

Reflect for a moment: the Holy Spirit knows all the purposes of God, and when they are about to be fulfilled, he moves the children of God to pray about them, and so their prayers keep touch and tally with the divine decrees.  Oh would you not pray confidently if you knew that your prayer corresponded with the sealed book of destiny?  We may safely entreat the Lord to do what he has himself ordained to do.  A carnal man draws the inference that if God has ordained an event we need not pray about it, but faith obediently draws the inference that the God who secretly ordained to give the blessing has openly commanded that we should pray for it, and therefore faith obediently prays.  Coming events cast their shadows before them, and when God is about to bless his people, his coming favor casts the shadow of prayer over the church.  When he is about to favor an individual, he casts the shadow of hopeful expectation over his soul.  Our prayers, let men laugh at them as they will, and say there is no power in them, are the indicators of the movement of the wheels of Providence.  Believing supplications are forecasts of the future.  He who prays in faith is like the seer of old, he sees that which is yet to be: his holy expectancy, like a telescope, brings distant objects near to him, and things not seen as yet are visible to him.  He is bold to declare that he has the petition which he has asked of God, and he therefore begins to rejoice and to praise God, even before the blessing has actually arrived.  So it is: prayer prompted by the Holy Spirit is the footfall of the divine decree.

I conclude by saying, see, my dear hearers, the absolute necessity of the Holy Spirit, for if the saints know not what they should pray for as they ought; if consecrated men and women, with Christ suffering in them, still feel their need of the instruction of the Holy Spirit, how much more do you who are not saints, and have never given yourselves up to God, require divine teaching!   Oh, that you would know and feel your dependence upon the Holy Ghost that he may prompt you this day to look to Jesus Christ for salvation.  It is through the once crucified but now ascended Redeemer that this gift of the Spirit, this promise of the Father, is shed abroad upon men.  May he who comes from Jesus lead you to Jesus.

And, then, O ye people of God, let this last thought abide with you – what condescension is this that this Divine Person should dwell in you for ever, and that he should be with you to help your prayers.  Listen to me for a moment.  If I read in the Scriptures that, in the most heroic acts of faith, God the Holy Ghost helps his people, I can understand it; if I read that in the sweetest music of their songs when they worship best, and chant their loftiest strains before the Most High God, the Spirit helps them, I can understand it; and even if I hear that in their wrestling prayers and prevalent intercessions God the Holy Spirit helps them, I can understand it: but I bow with reverent amazement, my heart sinking into the dust with adoration, when I reflect that God the Holy Ghost helps us when we cannot speak, but only groan.  Yea, and when we cannot even utter our groanings, he doth not only help us but he claims as his own particular creation the “groanings that cannot be uttered.”  This is condescension indeed In deigning to help us in the grief that cannot even vent itself in groaning, he proves himself to be a true Comforter.  O God, my God, thou hast not forsaken me: thou art not far from me, nor from the voice of my roaring, Thou didst for awhile leave thy Firstborn when he was made a curse for us, so that he cried in agony, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” but thou wilt not leave one of the “many brethren” for whom he died: thy Spirit shall be with them, and when they cannot so much as groan he will make intercession for them with groanings that cannot be uttered.  God bless you, my beloved brethren, and may you feel the Spirit of the Lord thus working in you and with you.  Amen and amen.

The Power of the Risen Savior by C. H. Spurgeon

“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” — Matthew 28:18-20.

The change from “the man of sorrows” before his crucifixion to the “Lord over all” after his resurrection is very striking.  Before his Passion, he was well known by his disciples, and appeared only in one form, as the Son of man, clad in the common peasant’s garment without seam, woven from the top throughout; but after he had risen from the dead he was on several occasions unrecognized by those who loved him best, and is once at least described as having appeared to certain of them “under another form.”  He was the same person, for they saw his hands and his feet, and Thomas even handled him, and placed his finger in the print of the nails; but yet it would seem that some gleams of his glory were at times manifested to them, a glory which had been hidden during his previous life, save only when he stood on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Before his death, his appearances were to the general public — he stood in the midst of Scribes and Pharisees and publicans and sinners, and preached the glad tidings; but now he appeared only to his disciples, sometimes to one, at another time to two, on one occasion to about five hundred brethren at once, but always to his disciples, and to them only.  Before his death his preaching was full of parable, plain to those who had understanding, but often dark and mysterious even to his own followers, for it was a judgment from the Lord upon that evil generation that seeing they should not see, and hearing they should not perceive.  Yet with equal truth we may say that our Lord before his death brought down his teaching to the comprehension of the uninstructed minds which listened to it, so that many of the deeper truths were slightly touched upon because they were not able to bear them as yet.

It was no small honor to have seen our risen Lord while yet he lingered here below.  What must it be to see Jesus as he is now!  He is the same Jesus as when he was here; yonder memorials as of a lamb that has been slain assure us that he is the same man.  Glorified in heaven his real manhood sits, and it is capable of being, beheld by the eye, and heard by the ear, but yet how different.  Had we seen him in his agony, we should all the more admire his glory.  Dwell with your hearts very much upon Christ crucified, but indulge yourselves full often with a sight of Christ glorified.  Delight to think that he is not here, for he is risen; he is not here, for he has ascended; he is not here, for he sits at the right hand of God, and maketh intercession for us.  Let your souls travel frequently the blessed highway from the sepulcher to the throne.  As in Rome, there was a Via Sacra along which returning conquerors went from the gates of the city up to the heights of the Capitol, so is there another Via Sacra which you ought often to survey, for along it the risen Savior went in glorious majesty from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea up to the eternal dignities of his Father’s right hand.  Your soul will do well to see her dawn of hope in his death, and her full assurance of hope in his risen life.

Today my business is to show, as far as God the Spirit may help me, Our Lord’s resurrection power.

At the risk of repeating myself; I should like to begin this head by asking you to remember last Sabbath morning’s sermon, when we went to Gethsemane, and bowed our spirits in the shade of those grey olives, at the sight of the bloody sweat.  What a contrast between that and this!  There you save the weakness of man, the bowing, the prostrating, the crushing of the manhood of the Mediator; but here you see the strength of the God-man: — he is girt with omnipotence, though still on earth when he spoke words he had received a privilege, honor, glory, fullness and power which lifted him far above the sons of men.  He was, as Mediator, no more a sufferer, but a sovereign; no more a victim, but a victor; no more a servant, but the monarch of earth and heaven.  Yet he had never received such power if he had not endured such weakness.  All power [would have] never been given to the Mediator if all comfort had not been taken away.  He stooped to conquer.  The way to his throne was downward.  Mounting upon steps of ivory, Solomon ascended to his throne of gold; but Our Lord and Master descended that he might ascend, and went down into the awful deeps of agony unutterable that all power in heaven and earth might belong to him as our Redeemer and Covenant Head.

Now think a moment of these words, “All power.” Jesus Christ has given to him by his Father, as a consequence of his death, “all power.”  It is but another way of saying that the Mediator possesses omnipotence, for omnipotence is but the Latin of “all power.”  What mind shall conceive, what tongue shall set in order before you, the meaning of all power?  We cannot grasp it; it is high, we cannot attain unto it.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for us.  The power of self-existence, the power of creation, the power of sustaining that which is made, the power of fashioning and destroying, the power of opening and shutting, of overthrowing or establishing, of killing and making alive, the power to pardon and to condemn, to give and to withhold, to decree and to fulfill, to be, in a word, “head over all things to his church,” — all this is vested in Jesus Christ our Lord.  We might as well attempt to describe infinity, or map the boundless as to tell what “all power” must mean; but whatever it is, it is all given to our Lord, all lodged in those hands which once were fastened to the wood of shame, all left with that heart which was pierced with the spear, all placed as a crown upon that head which was surrounded with a coronet of thorns.

“All power in heaven” is his. Observe that!  Then he has the power of God, for God is in heaven, and the power of God emanates from that central throne. Jesus, then, has divine power.  Whatever Jehovah can do Jesus can do.  If it were his will to speak another world into existence, we should see tonight a fresh star adorning the brow of night.  Were it his will at once to fold up creation like a worn out vesture, lo the elements would pass away, and yonder heavens would be shriveled like a scroll.  The power which binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades and looses the bands of Orion is with the Nazarene, the Crucified leads forth Arcturus with his sons.  Angelic bands are waiting on the wing to do the bidding of Jesus of Nazareth, and cherubim and seraphim and the four living creatures before the throne unceasingly obey him.  He who was despised and rejected of men now commands the homage of all heaven, as “God over all, blessed for ever.”

“All power in heaven” relates to the providential skill and might with which God rules everything in the universe.  He holds the reins of all created forces, and impels or restrains them at his will, giving force to law, and life to all existence.  The old heathen dreamed of Apollo as driving the chariot of the sun and guiding its fiery steeds in their daily course, but it is not so: Jesus is Lord of all.  He harnesses the winds to his chariot, and thrusts a bit into the mouth of the tempest, doing as he wills among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of this lower world.  From him in heaven emanates the power which sustains and governs this globe, for the Father hath committed all things into his hands.  “By him all things consist.”

“All power” must include — and this is a practical point to us — all the power of the Holy Ghost.  In the work which lies nearest our heart, the Holy Spirit is the great force.  It is he that convinces men of sin, and leads them to a Savior, gives them new hearts and right spirits, and plants them in the church, and then causes them to grove and become fruitful.  The power of the Holy Ghost goes forth among the sons of men according to the will of our Lord.  As the anointing oil poured upon Aaron’s head ran down his beard, and bedewed the skirts of his garments, so the Spirit which has been granted to him without measure flows from him to us.  He hath the residue of the Spirit, and according to his will the Holy Ghost goeth forth into the church, and from the church into the world, to the accomplishment of the purposes of saving grace.  It is not possible that the church should fail for want of spiritual gifts or influence while her heavenly Bridegroom has such overflowing stores of both.  All the power of the sacred Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, is at the command of Jesus, who is exalted far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come.

Our Lord also claimed that all power had been given to him on earth. This is more than could be truly said by any mere man; none of mortal race may claim all power in heaven, and when they aspire to all power on earth it is but a dream.  Universal monarchy has been strained after; it has seldom, if ever, been attained; and when it seemed within the clutch of ambition it has melted away like a snowflake before the sun.  Indeed, if men could rule all their fellows, yet they would not have all power on earth, for there are other forces which scorn their control.  All diseases laugh at the power of men.  The King of Israel, when Naaman came to him to be recovered of his leprosy, cried, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?”  He had not all power.

Winds and waves, moreover, scorn mortal rule.  It is not true that even Britannia rules the waves.  Canute, to rebuke his courtiers, places his throne at the margin of the tide, and commands the billows to take care that they wet not the feet of their royal master; but his courtiers were soon covered with spray, and the monarch proved that “all power” was not given to him.  Frogs and locusts and flies were more than a match for Pharaoh; the greatest of men are defeated by the weak things of God.  Nebuchadnezzar, struck with madness and herding with cattle, was an illustration of the shadowy nature of all human power.  The proudest princes have been made to feel by sickness, and pain, and death that after all they were but men, and oftentimes their weaknesses have been such as to make the more apparent the truth that power belongs unto God, and unto God alone, so that when he entrusts a little of it to the sons of men, it is so little that they are fools if they boast thereof.  See ye, then, before us.  A man who has power over all things on earth without exception, and is obeyed by all creatures, great and small, because the Lord Jehovah has put all things under his feet.

For our purposes, it will be most important for us to remember that our Lord has “all power” over the minds of men, both good and bad. He calls whomsoever he pleases into his fellowship, and they obey.  Having called them, he is able to sanctify them to the highest point of holiness, working in them all the good pleasure of his will with power.  The saints can be so influenced by our Lord, through the Holy Ghost, that they can be impelled to the divinest ardors, and elevated to the sublimest frames of mind.  Often do I pray, and I doubt not the prayer has come from you too, that God would raise up leaders in the church, men full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, standard-bearers in the day of battle.  The preachers of the gospel who preach with any power are few; still might John say, “Ye have not many fathers.”  More precious than the gold of Ophir are men who stand out as pillars of the Lord’s house, bulwarks of the truth, champions in the camp of Israel.  How few are our apostolic men!  We want again Luthers, Calvins, Bunyans, Whitfields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our foemen’s ears.  We have dire need of such.  Where are they?  Whence will they come to us?  We cannot tell in what farmhouse or village smithy, or school house such men may be, but our Lord has them in store.

They are the gifts of Jesus Christ to the church, and will come in due time.  He has power to give us back again a golden age of preachers, a time as fertile of great divines and mighty ministers as was the Puritan age, which many of us account to have been the golden age of theology.  He can send again the men of studious heart to search the word and bring forth its treasures, the men of wisdom and experience rightly to divide it, the golden-mouthed speakers who, either as sons of thunder or sons of consolation, shall deliver the message of the Lord with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven.  When the Redeemer ascended on high he received gifts for men, and those gifts were men fitted to accomplish the edification of the church, such as evangelists, pastors, and teachers.  These he is still able to bestow upon his people, and it is their duty to pray for them, and when they come, to receive them with gratitude.  Let us believe in the power of Jesus to give us valiant men and men of renown, and we little know how soon he will supply them.

Since all power on earth is lodged in Christ’s hands, he can also clothe any and all of his servants with a sacred might, by which their hands shall be sufficient for them in their high calling.  Without bringing them forth into the front ranks he can make them occupy their appointed stations till he comes, girt with a power which shall make them useful.  My brother, the Lord Jesus can make you eminently prosperous in the sphere in which he has placed you; my sister, your Lord can bless the little children who gather at your knee through your means.  You are very feeble, and you know it, but there is no reason why you should not be strong in him.  If you look to the strong for strength he can endue you with power from on high, and say to you as to Gideon, “Go in this thy might.”  Your slowness of speech need not disqualify you, for he will be with your mouth as with Moses.  Your want of culture need not hinder you, for Shamgar with his oxgoad smote the Philistines, and Amos, the prophet, was a herdsman.  Like Paul, your personal presence may be despised as weak, and your speech as contemptible, but yet like him you may learn to glory in infirmity, because the power of God doth rest upon you.  You may be as dry as Aaron’s rod, but he can make you bud and blossom, and bring forth fruit.  You may be as nearly empty as the widow’s purse, yet will he cause you still to overflow towards his saints.  You may feel yourself to be as near sinking as Peter amid the waves, yet will he keep you from your fears.  You may be as unsuccessful as the disciples who had toiled all night and taken nothing, yet he can fill your boat till it can hold no more.  No man knows what the Lord can make of him, nor what he may do by him, only this we do know assuredly that “all power” is with him by whom we were redeemed, and to whom we belong.

Oh, believers, resort ye to your Lord, to receive out of his fullness grace for grace.  Because of this power, we believe that if Jesus willed, he could stir the whole church at once to the utmost energy.  Does she sleep?  His voice can awaken her.  Does she restrain prayer?  His grace can stimulate her to devotion.  Has she grown unbelieving?  He can restore her ancient faith.  Does she turn her back in the day of battle, troubled with scepticisms and doubts?  He can restore her unwavering confidence in the gospel, and make her valiant till all her sons shall be heroes of faith and put to flight the armies of the aliens.  Let us believe, and we shall see the glory of God. Let us believe, I say, and once again our conquering days shall come, when one shall chase a thousand, and two shall put ten thousand to flight.  Never despair for the church; be anxious for her, and turn your anxiety into prayer, but be hopeful evermore, for her Redeemer is mighty and will stir up his strength.  “The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”  Degenerate as we are, there stands one among us whom the world sees not, whose shoe’s latchet we are not worthy to unloose: he shall again baptize us with the Holy Ghost and with fire, for “all power is given unto him.”

It is equally true that all power is given unto our Lord over the whole of mankind, even over that part of the race which rejects and continues in willful rebellion. He can use the ungodly for his purposes.  We have it on inspired authority that Herod and Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatsoever the Lord’s hand and counsel determined before to be done.  Their utmost wickedness did but fulfill the determinate counsel of God.  Thus doth he make wrath of man to praise him, and the most rebellious wills to be subservient to his sacred purposes. Jesus’ kingdom rules over all.  The powers of hell and all their hosts, with the kings of the earth, and the rulers set themselves and take counsel together, and all the while their rage is working out his designs.

Little do they know that they are but drudges to the King of Kings, scullions in the kitchen of his imperial palace.  All things do his bidding, his will is not thwarted, his resolves are not defeated; the pleasure of the Lord prospers in his hands.  By faith, I see him ruling and overruling on land and sea, and in all deep places.  Guiding the decisions of parliaments, dictating to dictators, commanding princes, and ruling emperors.  Let him but arise, and they that hate him shall flee before him; as smoke is driven, so will he drive them away; as wax melteth before the fire, so shall all his enemies perish at his presence.

As to sinful men in general, the Redeemer has power over their minds in a manner wonderful to contemplate.  At the present moment, we very much deplore the fact that the current of public thought runs strongly towards Popery, which is the alias of idolatry.  Well, what next?  Are we despairing?  God forbid that we should ever despond while all power is in the hand of Jesus.  He can turn the whole current of thought in an opposite direction, and that right speedily.  Did you not observe when the Prince of Wales was ill some months ago that everybody paid respect to the doctrine of prayer?  Did you not notice how the Times and other newspapers spoke right believingly as to prayer?  At this moment, it is fashionable to pooh-pooh the idea of God’s hearing our requests; but it was not so then.  A great philosopher has told us that it is absurd to suppose that prayer can have any effect upon the events of life; but God has only to visit the nation with some judgment severely felt by all and your philosopher will become as quiet as a mouse.  To my mind, it matters very little which way these fine folks go at any time, except that they are the straws which show which way the wind blows.  I repeat it, the current of thought can readily be turned by our Lord; he can as easily manage it as the miller controls the stream which flows over his wheel, or rushes past it.  The times are safe in our Redeemer’s management, he is mightier than the devil, the Pope, the infidel, and the ritualist, all put together.  All glory be to him who has all power in earth and heaven.

So too, our Lord can give, and he does give to the people an inclination to hear the gospel. Never be afraid of getting a congregation when the gospel is your theme.  Jesus, who gives you a consecrated tongue, will find willing ears to listen to you.  At his bidding, deserted sanctuaries grow crowded, and the people throng to hear the joyful sound.  Ay, and he can do more than that, for he can make the word powerful to the conversion of thousands He can constrain the frivolous to think, the obstinately heretical to accept the truth, and those who set their faces like a flint to yield to his gracious sway.  He has the key of every human heart; he opens, and no man shuts: he shuts, and no man opens.  He will clothe his word with power and subdue the nations thereby.  It is ours to proclaim the gospel, and to believe that no man is beyond the saving power of Jesus Christ.  Doubly dyed, yea, sevenfold steeped in the scarlet dye of vice the sinner may be cleansed, and the ringleader in vice may become a pattern of holiness.  The Pharisee can be converted — was not Paul?  Even priests may be saved, for did not a great multitude of the priests believe?  There is no man in any conceivable position of sin, who is beyond the power of Christ.  He may be gone to the uttermost in sin, so as to stand on the verge of hell, but if Jesus stretch out his pierced hand, he will be plucked like a brand out of the burning.

My soul glows as I think of what my Lord can do. If all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth, then this morning he could convert, pardon, and save every man and woman in this place; nay, he could influence the four millions of this city to cry, “What must we do to be saved?  “Nor in this city only could he work, but throughout the whole earth: if it seemed good to his infinite wisdom and power he could make every sermon to be the means of conversion of all who heard it, every Bible and every copy of the Word to become the channel of salvation to all who read it, and I know not in how short a time the cry would be heard, “Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”  Heard that cry shall be, rest assured of that.  We are on the conquering side.  We have with us One who is infinitely greater than all that can be against us, since “all power” is given unto him.

Brethren, we have no doubts, we entertain no fears, for every moment of time is bringing on the grand display of the power of Jesus.  We preach today, and some of you despise the gospel; we bring Christ before you, and you reject him; but God will change his hand with you before long and your despisings and your rejectings will then come to an end, for that same Jesus who event from Olivet, and ascended into heaven, will so come in like manner as he was seen to go up into heaven.  He will descend with matchless pomp and power, and this astonished world which saw him crucified shall see him enthroned; and in the self same place where men dogged his heels and persecuted him, they shall crowd around him to pay him homage, for he must reign, and put his enemies under his feet.  This same earth shall be gladdened by his triumphs which once was troubled with his griefs.  And more.  You may be dead before the Lord shall come, and your bodies may be rotting in the tomb, but you will know that all power is his, for at the blast of his trumpet your bodies shall rise again to stand before his terrible judgment seat.  You may have resisted him here, but you will be unable to oppose him then; you may despise him now, but then you must tremble before him.  “Depart ye cursed,” will be to you a terrible proof that he has “all power,” if you will not now accept another and a sweeter proof of it by coming unto him who bids the laboring and heavy laden partake of his rest.  “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.  Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”

Edited and excerpted from a sermon delivered on October 25^th, 1874.

Pictures of Life by C. H. Spurgeon

“What is your life?” James 4:14

It well behoves me, now that another year of my existence has almost gone, standing on the threshold of a fresh era, to consider what I am, where I am going, what I am doing, whom I am serving, and what shall he my reward.  I will not, however, do so publicly before you; I hope that I may be enabled to perform that duty in secret; but rather let me turn this occurrence to another account by speaking to you of the frailty of human life, the fleeting nature of time, how swiftly it passes away, how soon we all shall fade as a leaf, and how speedily the place which knows us now shall know us no more for ever.

The apostle James asks, “What is your life?” and, thanks to inspiration, we are at no great difficulty to give the reply; for Scripture being the best interpreter of Scripture, supplies us with many very excellent answers.  I shall attempt to give you some of them.

I. First, we shall view life with regard to ITS SWIFTNESS.

It is a great fact that though life to the young man, when viewed in the prospect appears to be long, to the old man it is ever short, and to all men life is really but a brief period.  Human life is not long.  Compare it with the existence of some animals and trees, and how short is human life!  Compare it with the ages of the universe, and it becomes a span; and especially measure it by eternity, and how little does life appear!  It sinks like one small drop into the ocean, and becomes as insignificant as one tiny grain of sand upon the seashore.

Life is swift.  If you would picture life, you must, turn to the Bible, and this evening we will walk through the Bible-gallery of old paintings.  You will find its swiftness spoken of in the Book of Job, where we are furnished with three illustrations.  In the ninth chapter and at the twenty-fifth verse, we read, “Now my days are swifter than a post.”  We are most of us acquainted with the swiftness of post-conveyance.  I have sometimes, on an emergency, taken posthorses where there has been no railway, and have been amazed and pleased with the rapidity of my journey.  But since, in this ancient Book, there can be no allusion to modern posts, we must turn to the manners and customs of the East, and in so doing we find that the ancient monarchs astonished their subjects by the amazing rapidity with which they received intelligence.  By well-ordered arrangements, swift horses, and constant relays, they were able to attain a speed which, although trifling in these days, was in those slower ages a marvel of marvels; so that, to an Eastern, one of the clearest ideas of swiftness was that of “a post.”  Well doth Job say that our life is swifter than a post.  We ride one year until it is worn out, but there comes another just as swift, and we are borne by it, and soon it is gone, and another year serves us for a steed, post-house after post-house we pass, as birthdays successively arrive, we loiter not, but vaulting at a leap from one year to another, still we hurry onward, onward, ever onward.  My life is like a post: not like the slow wagon that drags along the road with tiresome wheels, but like a post, it attains the greatest speed.

Job further says, “My days are passed away as the swift ships.”  He increases, you see, the intensity of the metaphor; for if, in the Eastern’s idea anything could exceed the swiftness of the post, it was the swift ship.  Some translate this passage as “the ships of desire;” that is, the ships hurrying home, anxious for the haven, and therefore crowding, on all sail.

You may well conceive now swiftly the mariner flies from a threatening storm, or seeks the port where he will find his home.  You have sometimes seen how the ship cuts through the billows, leaving a white furrow behind her, and causing the sea to boil around her.  Such is life, says Job, “as the swift ships,” when the sails are filled by the wind, and the vessel dashes on, cleaving a passage through the crowding waves.  Swift are the ships, but swifter far is life.  The wind of time bears me along.  I cannot stop its motion, I may direct it with the rudder of God’s Holy Spirit; I may, it is true, take in some small sails of sin, which might hurry my days on faster than otherwise they would go; but, nevertheless, like a swift ship, my life must speed on its way until it reaches its haven.  Where is that haven to be?  Shall it be found in the land of bitterness and barrenness, that dreary region of the lost?  Or shall it be that sweet haven of eternal peace, where not a troubling wave can ruffle the quiescent glory of my spirit?  Wherever the haven is to be, that, truth is the same, we are “as the swift ships.”

Job also says that life is “as the eagle that hasteth to the prey.”  The eagle is a bird noted for its swiftness.  I remember reading an account of an eagle attacking a fish-hawk, which had obtained some booty from the deep, and was bearing it aloft.  The hawk dropped the fish, which fell towards the water; but before the fish had reached the ocean, the eagle had flown more swiftly shall the fish could fall, and catching it in its beak it flew away with it.  The swiftness of the eagle is almost incalculable; you see it, and it is gone; you see a dark speck in the sky yonder; it is an eagle soaring; let the fowler imagine that, by-and-by, he shall overtake it on some mountain’s craggy peak, it shall be gone long before he reaches it.  Such is our life. It is like an eagle hasting to its prey; not merely an eagle flying in its ordinary course, but an eagle hasting to its prey.  Life appears to be hasting to its end; death seeks the body as its prey; life is ever fleeing from insatiate death; but death is too swift to be out run, and as an eagle overtakes his prey, so shall death.

If we require a further illustration of the swiftness of life, we must turn to two other passages in the Book of Job, upon which I shall not dwell.  One, will be found in the seventh chapter, at the sixth verse, where Job says, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,” which the weaver throws, so quickly that the eye can hardly discern it.  But he gives us a yet more excellent metaphor in the seventh verse of the same chapter, where he says, “O remember that my life is wind.”  Now this excels in velocity all the other figures we have examined.  Who can out stride the winds? Proverbially, the winds are rapid; even in their gentlest motion they appear to be swift.  But when they rush in the tornado, or when they dash madly on in the hurricane, when the tempest blows, and tears down everything, how swift then is the wind!  Perhaps some of us may have a gentle gale of wind, and we may not seem to move so swiftly; but with others, who are only just born, and then snatched away to heaven, the swiftness may be compared to that of the hurricane, which soon snaps the ties of life, and leaves the infant dead.  Surely our life is like the wind.

Oh, if you could but catch these idea, my friends!  Though we may be sitting still in this chapel, yet you know that we are all really in motion.  This world is turning round on its axis once in four-and-twenty hours, and besides that, it is moving round the sun in the 365 days of the year.  So that we are all moving, we are all flitting along through space, and as we are traveling through space, so are we moving through time at an incalculable rate.

Oh, what an idea this is could we but grasp it!  We are all being carried along as if by a giant angel, with broad outstretched wings, which he flaps to the blast, and flying before the lightning, makes us ride on the winds.  The whole multitude of us are hurrying along, — whither, remains to be decided by the test of our faith and the grace of God; but certain it is that we are all traveling.  Do not think that you are stable, fixed in one position; fancy not that you are standing still; you are not.  Your pulses each moment beat the funeral marches to the tomb.  You are chained to the chariot of rolling time; there is no bridling the steeds, or leaping from the chariot; you must be constantly in motion.

Thus then, have I spoken of the swiftness of life.

II. But, next, I must speak concerning THE UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE, of which we have abundant illustrations.

Let us refer to that part of Scripture from, which I have chosen my text, the Epistle of James, the fourth chapter, at the fourteenth verse: “For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”  If I were to ask for a child’s explanation of this, I know what he would say.  He would say, “Yes, it is even a vapor, like a bubble that is blown upward.”  Children sometimes blow bubbles, and amuse themselves thereby.  Life is even as that bubble.  You see it rising into the air; the child delights in seeing it fly about, but it is all gone in one moment.

“It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”  But if you ask the poet to explain this, he would tell you that, in the morning, sometimes at early dawn, the rivers send up a steamy offering to the sun.  There is a vapor, a mist, an exhalation rising from the rivers and brooks, but in a very little while after the sun has risen all that mist has gone.  Hence we read of “the morning cloud, and the early dew that passeth away.”  A more common observer, speaking of a vapor, would think of those thin clouds you sometimes see floating in the air, which are so light that they are soon carried away. Indeed, a poet uses them as the picture of feebleness, —

“Their hosts are scatter’d, like thin clouds

Before a Biscay gale.”

The wind moves them, and they are gone.  “What is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”  So uncertain is life!

Again, if you read in the Book of Ecclesiastes, at the sixth chapter, and the twelfth verse, you will there find life compared to something else, even more fragile than a vapor. The wise man there says that it is even “as a shadow.”  Now, what can there be less  substantial than a shadow?  What substance is there in a shadow?  Who can lay hold of  it?  You may see a person’s shadow as he passes you, but the moment the person passes away his shadow is gone.  Yea, and who can grasp his life?  Many men reckon upon a long existence, and think they are going to live here for ever; but who can calculate upon a shadow? Go, thou foolish man, who sayest to thy soul, “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease! eat, drink, and be merry;” go thou, and store thy room, with shadows; go thou, and pile up shadows and say, “These are mine, and they shall never depart.”  But thou sayest, “I cannot catch a shadow.”  No, and thou canst not reckon on a year, or even a moment, for it is as a shadow, that soon melteth away, and is gone.

King Hezekiah also furnishes us with a simile, where he says that life is as a thread which is cut off.  You will find this in the prophecy of Isaiah, the thirty-eighth chapter, at the twelfth verse: “Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life.”  The weaver cuts off his thread very easily, and so is life soon ended.

I might continue my illustrations at pleasure concerning the uncertainty of life.  We might find, perhaps, a score more figures in Scripture if we would search.  Take, for instance, the grass, the flowers of the field, etc.  But though life is swift, and though it is to pass away so speedily, we are still generally very anxious to know what it is to be, while we have it.  For we say, if we are to lose it soon, still, while we live, let us live; and whilst we are to be here, be it ever so short a time, let us know what we are to expect in it.

III. And that leads us, in the third place, to look at LIFE IN ITS CHANGES.

If you want pictures of the changes of life, turn to this wonderful Book of poetry, the Sacred Scriptures, and there you will find metaphors piled on metaphors.  And, first, you will find life compared to a pilgrimage by good old Jacob, in the forty-seventh chapter of Genesis, and the ninth verse.  That hoary-headed patriarch, when he was asked by Pharaoh what was his age, replied, “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years; few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not obtained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”  He calls life, a pilgrimage.  A pilgrim sets out in the morning, and he has to journey many a day before he gets to the shrine which he, seeks.  What varied scenes the traveler will behold on his way!

Sometimes he will be on the mountains, anon he will descend into the valleys, here he will be where the brooks shine like silver, where the birds warble, where the air is balmy, and the trees are green, and luscious fruits hang down to gratify his taste, anon he will find himself in the arid desert, where no life is found, and no sound is heard, except the screech of the wild eagle in the air, where he finds no rest for the sole of his foot, — the burning sky above him, and the hot sand beneath him, — no roof-tree, and no house to rest himself; at another time he finds himself in a sweet oasis, resting himself by the wells of water, and plucking fruit from palm-trees.  At one time he walks between the rocks, in some narrow gorge, where all is darkness, at another time he ascends the hill Mizar; now he descends into the valley of Baca anon he climbs the hill of Bashan, and a high hill is the hill Bashan and yet again going into the mountains of leopards, he suffers trial and affliction.

Such is life, ever changing.  Who can tell what may come next?  Today it is fair, tomorrow there may be the blundering storm; today I may want for nothing, tomorrow I may be like Jacob, with nothing but a stone for my pillow, and the heavens for my curtains.  But what a happy thought it is, though we know not how the road winds, we know where it ends.  It is the straightest way to heaven to go round about. Israel’s forty years wanderings were, after all, the nearest path to Canaan.  We may have to go through trial and affliction; the pilgrimage may be a tiresome one, but it is safe; we cannot trace the river upon which we are sailing, but we know it ends in floods of bliss at last.  We cannot track the roads, but we know that they all meet in the great metropolis of heaven, in the center of God’s universe.  God help us to pursue the true pilgrimage of a pious life!

We have another picture of life in its changes given to us in the ninetieth Psalm, at the ninth verse: “We spend our years as a tale that is told.”  Now David understood about tales that were told; I daresay he had been annoyed by them sometimes, and amused by them at other times.  There are, in the past, professed story-tellers, who amused their hearers by inventing tales such as those in that foolish book the “Arabian Nights.”  When I was foolish enough to read that book, I remember sometimes you were with fairies, sometimes with genii, sometimes in palaces, anon you went, down into caverns.  All sorts of singular things are conglomerated into what they call a tale.

Now, says David, “we spend our years as a tale that is told.”  You know there is nothing so wonderful as the history of the odds and ends of human life.  Sometimes it is a merry rhyme, sometimes a prosy subject; sometimes you ascend to the sublime, soon you descend to the ridiculous.  No man can write the whole of his own biography, I suppose, if the complete history of a man’s thoughts and words could be written, the world itself would hardly contain the record, so wonderful is the tale that might be told.  Our lives are all singular, and must to ourselves seem strange; of which much might be said.  Our life is “as a tale that is told.”

Another idea we get from the thirty-eighth chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah, at the twelfth verse: “I am removed as a shepherd’s tent.”  The shepherds in the East build temporary huts near the sheep, which are soon removed when the flock moves on; when the hot season comes on, they pitch their tents in the most favorable place they can find, and each season has its suitable position.  My life is like a shepherd’s tent.  I have pitched my tent in a variety of places already; but where I shall pitch it by-and-by, I do not know, I cannot tell.  Present probabilities seem to say that —

“Here I shall make my settled rest,

And neither go nor come:

No more a stranger or a guest,

But like a child at home.”

But I cannot tell, and you cannot divine.  I know that my tent cannot be removed till God says, “Go forward;” and it cannot stand firm unless he makes it so.

“All my ways shall ever be

Order’d by his wise decree.”

You have been opening a new shop lately, and you are thinking of settling down in trade, and managing a thriving concern; now paint not the future too brightly, do not be too sure as to what is in store for you.  Another has for a long time been engaged in an old establishment; your father always carried on trade there, and you have no thought of moving; but here you have no abiding city; your life is like a shepherd’s tent; you may be here, there, and almost everywhere before you die.  It was once said by Solan, “No man ought to be called a happy man till he dies,” because he does not know what his life is to be; but Christians may always call themselves happy men here, because, wherever their tent is carried, they cannot pitch it where the cloud does not move, and where they are not surrounded by a circle of fire.  God will be a wall of fire round about them, and their glory in the midst.  They cannot dwell where God is not the bulwark of their salvation.

If any of you who are God’s people are going to change your condition, are going to move out of one situation into another, to take a new business, or remove to another county, you need not fear, God was with you in the last place, and he will be with you in this.  He hath said, “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.”  That is an oft-told story of Caesar in a storm.  The sailors were all afraid; but he exclaimed, “Fear not! thou carriest Caesar and all his fortunes.”  So is it with the poor Christian.  There is a storm coming on, but fear not, thou art carrying Jesus, and thou must sink or swim with him.  Well may any true believer say, “Lord, if thou art with me, it matters not where my tent is.  All must be well, though my life is removed like a shepherd’s tent.”

Again, our life is compared in the Psalms to a dream.  Now, if a tale is singular, surely a dream, is still more so.  If a tale is changing and shifting, what is a dream?  As for dreams, those flutterings of the benighted fancy, those revelries of the imagination, who can tell what they consist of?  We dream of everything in the world, and a few things more!  If we were asked to tell our dreams, it would be impossible for us to do so.  You dream that you are at a feast; and lo! the viands change into Pegasus, and you are riding through the air; or, again, suddenly transformed into a morsel for a monster’s meal.  Such is life.  The changes occur as suddenly as they happen in a dream.  Men have been rich one day, and they have been beggars the next.  We have witnessed the exile of monarchs, and the flight of a potentate; or, in, another direction, we have seen a man, neither reputable in company nor honorable in station, at a single stride exalted to a throne; and you, who would have shunned him in the streets before, were foolish enough to throng your thoroughfares to stare at him.  Ah! such is life. Leaves of the Sibyl were not more easily moved by the winds, nor are dreams more variable.  “Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”  How foolish are those men who wish to pry into the future!  The telescope is ready, and they are going to look through it, but they are so anxious to see, that they breathe on the glass with their hot breath, and they dim it, so that they can discern nothing but clouds and darkness.  Oh, ye who are always conjuring up black fiends from the deep unknown, and foolishly vexing your minds with fancies, turn your fancies out of doors, and begin to rest on never-failing promises!  Promises are better than forebodings.  “Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.”

Thus I have spoken of the changes of this mortal life.

IV. And now, to close, let me ask, WHAT IS TO BE THE END OF THIS LIFE?

We read in the second Book of Samuel, chapter 14, and verse 14, “We must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.”  Man is like a great icicle, which the sun of time is continually thawing, and which is soon to be as water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.  Who can recall the departed spirit, or inflate the lungs with a new breath of life?  Who can put vitality into the heart, and restore the soul from Hades?  None.  It cannot be gathered up again; the place that once knew it shall know it no more for ever.

But here a sweet thought charms us.  This water cannot be lost, but it shall descend into the soil to filter through, the Rock of ages, at last to spring up a pure fountain in heaven, cleansed, purified, and made clear as crystal.

How terrible if, on the other hand, it should percolate through the black earth of sin, and hang in horrid drops in the dark caverns of destruction!  Such is life!  Then, make the best use of it, my friends, because it is fleeting.  Look for another life, because this life is not a very desirable one, it is so changeable.  Trust your life in God’s hand, because you cannot control its movements, rest in his arms, and rely on his might; for he is able to do for you exceeding abundantly above all that you ask or think; and unto his name be glory for ever and ever! Amen.