In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. He emphasizes that the Spirit of God can unveil and unfold the truth of the Bible to one's heart, guiding them into all truth. The speaker also highlights the seven statements made by Jesus about the ministry of the Holy Spirit. These statements provide a comprehensive understanding of the Holy Spirit's work in the life of a believer. The speaker concludes by sharing his personal journey of meditating and praying about these seven statements for six years, emphasizing the significance of seeking a deeper understanding of the Holy Spirit's role in our lives.

Our theme is the seven words of our Lord Jesus concerning the ministry of the Holy Spirit when he should come. Our Lord made seven statements concerning the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. There is elsewhere in the Scripture enlargement upon these, but no real addition to them. And when you understand these seven statements, you will understand the ministry of the Holy Ghost in your life. Now, I am troubled about one thing. I have had the privilege this past week of being at Boston with thirty, probably a total period of three days, about fifty InterVarsity Christian fellowship leaders from the Boston schools, and I spoke ten hours in those three days on this theme. And now I shall endeavor to compress into thirty-five minutes what has just occupied me for ten hours. You shall have to do nine hours and twenty-five minutes of thinking on your own in order to have that which I believe the Lord has for you. These seven words were first related to me and called to my attention through the gracious ministry of Dr. A. C. Sneed. It was six years ago in December that I met him for the second time, the first had been as a student in college. We conversed together about the grace and goodness of our wonderful Lord, and in his inimitable fashion he had that which was fresh and lovely from the Lord to give to me. Now, I have been meditating and praying about these seven things for six years. It takes just about that long, you know, to have a message become real to you that it can become real to others. John the Baptist came preaching repentance, but repentance had as its goal not merely escape from the fire of the threshing floor when the chaff should be burned and the wheat garnered, but John said, Repent and be baptized, for there comes one after me that is preferred before me. He it is, Christ, he it is that baptizeth you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Thus in the initial preaching of the good news of Christ was the preaching of the fullness of the Spirit as the goal of grace. I would like to have you see, therefore, that we can't have a plateau concept of the grace of God, that there is a normal state of being forgiven, and then there's a higher, lower, deeper, broader, or some other term, and I use the term, though I criticize myself for the using, of life that is for the eager few. You know, we've had an idea that to get people saved was the sumum bonum, and then if they were eager enough, they could climb up to the higher life or reach to the victorious life, but that God wasn't particularly interested in that. His primary purpose was to get them quote, saved. Now, I beg to differ with those who might still hold that. God's purpose in grace was not just to save us from hell, but to make us like Jesus Christ and bring us into fellowship with himself now, here, while we're still in time. The other statement of our Lord concerning the Holy Spirit is found in John 7, verses 37 through 39. In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture has said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. Drink, that from you might flow. Drink, that you might be the means of blessing. It's identically the same message in import as that given by John. Repent, that you may be baptized with the Holy Ghost. Drink, that from you may flow. There may come thus to others. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because the Jesus was not yet glorified. Now, in John 14, the supper is concluded. They're in the upper room, waiting to leave with him to cross the brook he'd drawn and go into the Garden of Olives, where he would pray. And he wants to introduce them to that which is to follow. It is of paramount importance to them and to us. Will you follow as I begin reading with the fifteenth verse of John 14? If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever. Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more. But ye see me, because I live, ye shall live also. Notice now, our Lord indicts the world for its crudeness in limiting reality to the things they can see and feel and handle. We are indeed a people, by nature and environment, almost confined to the prison of time and sense. If it has dimensions and can be weighed, we are prepared to consent to it that it is real. But we are beginning to understand, and I want you to know that when I make this little statement, I do it with no illusions about my knowledge. Most of my science these days I get from the Reader's Digest, and therefore I make no pretense of being a physicist. But I am equated with the fact, from that book and others, that the scientist of today, the physicist of today, is beginning to look at matter through little different eyes. He's beginning to see matter as a swirling mass of electrons, as it was stated so clearly in that article of about four years ago, Can a Scientist Believe in God? That we now understand that matter is made up of particles of energy which are held together in constellation form, and that thus the things that we see actually consist of that which can't be seen. We see it in this form, this phenomena that is before us. We can measure it and feel it. But what it is in its essence in the atom is energy, and the combination of these particles together gives it its distinctive form and shape. Now that's the end of my physics lesson. I haven't anything more to say, and I'm over my head here. But the fact still remains that what we see isn't as it appears, and still we are confined by our ignorance to time and sense. Now our Lord said to the woman at the well, God is spirit. God is spirit. And he was standing before her as God come in the flesh. But the part of him that she saw was flesh just as real as yours. You see, he was to those of his generation as a root out of the dry ground, and there was no beauty that they should desire him. He was the eternal son who is described by himself as being spirit. God is spirit. He was the eternal son, now manifest in human flesh. And unfortunately, she couldn't see beneath the flesh to him, for that was a revelation. He said to Peter, the flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, because flesh and blood is limited to what it can see and feel. But my Father hath revealed it unto you. And we recognize that the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal son, didn't begin when he was born. He had eternally existed as son. He is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. But now he has come in the flesh, and he's beheld by men. But he is spirit living in the flesh, eternal God. Now you are spirit living in the flesh, in the body. You are not your body. Well, I'm prepared to admit that you're very closely associated for a little while. But the fact will come, the time will come when that association will be broken. And your loved ones gathered around your bedside will look at one another with tear-dimmed eyes and say, she is gone. And yet all that familiar remains. Because you are not your body. You are a spirit living in a body. A finite spirit. A temporal spirit. But God is infinite spirit. Eternal spirit. Now, it's that part of you that leaves, the human spirit, that is regenerated at the time of salvation. The spirit of God joins himself to that invisible part of you. The next morning, after you were born again, your face and facial features were quite as they'd been the day before. The scars remained that had been put there in your play as an infant. Your body was the same, the same as it had been previously. One day, you're going to have a new body. For your salvation includes that in its ultimate perfection. You're going to have a body like unto his own body of glory. But now, that which has been moved upon in the miracle of regeneration is your spirit. You are a spirit living in a body. And when you were saved, God, who is spirit, joined himself to your spirit in regeneration. Now, said he, the natural man receives not the things of God, for they are spiritually deserved, for they are revealed by the spirit. And therefore he is saying this, that the world receives them because they can't, can't receive them because they can't see them. Have you been born of God? Now, if you are here today, and undoubtedly in a company this large there are many that have never been born again, I must, I do regret that I can't, can take the entire morning, the time we have to talk to you about the necessity of the new birth, and the necessity of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Let me say to you that that of which I speak will be words, and we do appreciate your kindness, but they are words which have meaning only to those that have been born into the Father's family. And we invite you now, lest you should feel that you have not been included, we invite you now to understand all you can, but meanwhile to realize that Jesus Christ is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Receive him as Lord of your life and Savior of your soul, and before you leave you can go out of here a new creation in Christ Jesus. And we warmly urge you to come to him. But you that are his, that have been born of him, that have passed from death to life, are now those to whom he speaks. For you are not of the world, you've been born into the Father's family. The first thing that he says the Spirit of God will do when he comes to abide in his fullness in the believer's life, for of that he speaks, is found in verse 20. The first thing that he does is found in verse 20. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. Now, we must distinguish between two aspects of the witnessing work of the Holy Spirit. The first is that when he, as the spirit of adoption, witnesses to our hearts that we are born again. For at the moment that one repents of his sin and savingly receives the Son of God, two miracles transpire. The first is in heaven, in the legal department we call it justification by faith, where in this all of the sinner's sin are laid on Jesus Christ, and the righteousness of Jesus Christ is credited to the sinner. But at the same instant that one is justified, he is regenerated. The way he discovers he is justified is because the Spirit of God in regeneration witnesses to his heart that he has been born again. When you have been born into God's family, you do not need to have someone tell you. You tell them. You see, the work is done in your heart, in you, in your spirit. Now, it's important that someone should tell you how to be saved, how much you need to be saved, what God did in order that you might be saved, and what you must do if you ever are saved. But when it happens, you are the one that report the event. You've heard the little chorus the children sing, something happened. When he saved me, happened in my heart, happened in my heart, something happened when he saved me, something happened in my heart. And when that happens, you know it as the Spirit of adoption. He enables you to cry, Abba, Father. You know it because you know it. It's so hard to define the witness of the Spirit. I suppose the simplest definition is this. You know that you know because you know. When of course that hasn't explained much, but it's certainly true to the experience of those that have it, that have this certainty, this this confidence that passes the necessity of argument and of proof. Now, there is a second aspect. So many times people say, well how will I know when I am filled with the Spirit? Well my friend, you will know that you are filled with the fullness of God the same way that you knew you were hungry to be filled with the fullness of God, previous to that event. You will know because you know. Just as you know certainly and surely that you are hungry today for the fullness of Christ and glorious reality in your life, in that day you will know. You will need no other corroborating experience or event. You know. You know because the same one that stirred your heart with hunger satisfies your heart with his fullness and his presence, and you know. There are those who would teach us that there are certain events that must happen and certain phenomena that must be experienced before you know you're filled with the Spirit. But this is a contradiction of his word. He said, in that day ye shall know that I am in you and you are in me. You'll know it by the same way that you knew you were hungry, you'll know that you're filled. He will himself be the fullness and therefore he is himself the certainty. You know. Now the second thing that you will find here is in verse 26 of the 14th chapter. This is the second ministry of the Spirit of God. But the Comforter, 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. Notice this word Comforter. In the English it is seemingly confined to the hour of sorrow and grief, but in the Greek it is much stronger than that and much more important to your daily life. Literally the word is parakletos, and it means one who goes alongside to help, one who is continuously there to be unto you everything that you are not. Now you are going to appreciate him in proportion to your understanding of yourself. And of course one of God's greatest tasks is to reveal us, reveal ourselves to ourselves. For we have haloed ourselves and we look at ourselves usually through rose-colored glasses and think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think. I'm sure that was true of me as I came into the Christian life. As I've told you I was rather certain that God had really taken one of the top apples off of the basket and that he had gotten just about as much as it was possible to get in one little one little skin. And here I was to be such a blessing to him. Oh how long and loving and patient the Lord is to prove to us what we are. How tender he is until the time comes that he needs abrasive instruments, and then how efficient he is. How quickly he can peel through that little thin layer of self-satisfaction. Oh my friend, have you seen yourself? What do you need? What do you need? Well if you understand yourself alright, you need everything. You can't live the Christian life the way it ought to be lived, and you can't serve the way you ought to serve, or pray the way you ought to pray, or read the way you ought to read, or be what you ought to be. Have you tried it? Do you know what God thought of you and me? One day God gave to the world a testimony about you. He took you and I was there at the same time. He took us, perhaps I'll make it more inclusive if I say that. Perhaps it's even better if I say he took me, if you don't misunderstand. Outside of that cross, city of Jerusalem, he analyzed me, he weighed me, he tested me, he looked at me in and out in all of his wisdom and all of his love, and then he pronounced the verdict useless. This is what I can do, this is what I think, and this is what he's good for. Not unto the cross! And so I swung there from a beam, and there I was an exhibit to the world of what God thought of me. Now, what does that mean? What do I need in the paracletos? Just comfort when I'm in sorrow? I need everything. I need wisdom to understand, and will to do, and courage and faith and love and patience and every needed grace. I need everything. And he's the one that goes alongside to help, and he has everything I need. And when the Comforter is come, he will teach you all things. He'll teach you what you can't do. He'll teach you what you don't have. He'll teach you what God didn't expect of you. And he'll teach you what you should do with yourself and how you should view yourself and where you should take yourself and the attitude you should have toward yourself. He'll teach you about yourself. And then he'll teach you about the Lord. He'll open the eyes of your understanding that you may know of Christ, of him. And then he'll teach you about the world. He'll teach you everything. He'll be your teacher. You know, sometimes I wonder why it is so much preaching can be done with so little seeming profit in the lives of those that hear. The answer can only be one, and that is there is only one that can teach spiritual truth, and that is the Holy Spirit. And you listen to me day in and day out, week in and week out, year in and year out, and if you're not taught of him, all I can do is embed certain impressions in your memory. But I can't teach spiritual truth. Only he can teach. Therefore, you are cast upon him. Lord, teach me. Teach me, Lord. And you're wholly shut up to him. The eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the minds of men the things that God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. He is the one that teaches. He'll teach you where you are, and where you're to go, and what you're to do. He'll be the teacher. He's to teach. This is his ministry. Then the third thing we find concerning the Holy Spirit is in the twenty-sixth verse of the fifteenth chapter. But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceeded from the Father, he shall testify of me. He shall testify of me. And ye also shall bear witness, because you've been with me from the beginning. Have you wondered perhaps why you found it so difficult to witness? Have you had some reason in your mind to think that perhaps your mouth has been strangely silent and sealed of late about the Lord? Do you know when you witness? It is when something has been remade real to you of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only then. And therefore, you find it exceedingly difficult to go to some man living in current problems and difficulties and say, Twenty-seven years ago I came to an altar and there I was forgiven. And the man looks at you and scratches his head and he says, Now that's all right, but what's happened in these last twenty-seven years? You heard of the man who gave his witness in church, prayer meeting, for forty years. It was the same one year as it was thirty-five and forty years later. But one year ago, and then it increased each year, I dipped my bucket into the well of salvation and I've never had to dip again. Well, after forty years, one of the brethren who'd lost his patience, and he said to him, after he'd finished this testimony, he said, Brother, we've heard that testimony now for forty years, that you dipped your bucket into the well of salvation and you've never dipped again. Brother, if you looked into that bucket, I'll bet he's got wiggle tails in it. And that's what the world sees, the wiggle tails in our experience, until the Holy Spirit testifies of Christ in your need, in your daily problem. Every need that you have is met in Christ. The New Yorker magazine thought it was so smug when it put the cartoon some weeks ago of a man standing down looking at a huge billboard, Christ is the answer, and one man turns to the other and says, But what's the question? You understand, he had no insight into his need or problem, or he'd have said, I know the question. Every need that I have I must find met somewhere. Every need you have is met in a person. You know, if the lights go out, you don't need a new switch, you need an electrician. Plumbing doesn't work, you need a plumber. If you need advertising, it's an advertiser. All needs of life are met in a person, and when you come to the end of your moral and spiritual resources, then those needs must be met in a person. And it is the Spirit of God that testifies to you that your current need is met in Jesus Christ. And when he meets that need, then you witness. You witness. You always testify to what is real. If you are not testifying, it's because you have lost reality in your Christian experience. You testify to what is real. When he is real, you testify by your look, your attitude, your action, your word. And this is his ministry. He shall testify of me to you, in your need. Did you know that the names of God are all fulfilled in need of a person? Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who provides in your need, he completes the revelation of himself to you. And in your need, the Spirit of God testifies that Jesus Christ is that to you, and when he is revealed to be that, you witness for him. Your witness grows out of the reality of his presence. And when the Spirit of God is filling you, you're living in that constant exuberance of the unfolding revelation of the glory of Jesus Christ. Now, the fourth thing that the Spirit of God will do when he comes is given to us in verse 8 of the 16th chapter. And when he is come, he will reprove the world, or convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin, because they believe not of me. Of righteousness, because I go to my Father and ye see me no more. Of judgment, because the Prince of this world is judged. This is his ministry through you to the unsaved. This was his ministry to you before you were saved. His ministry, therefore, is to convict. There must be distinguished in your work with unsaved people between a natural process of recollection of sin and the supernatural work of conviction of sin. Sinners everywhere recall their misdeeds because their conscience warned them at the time they were committed. But it is the work of the Holy Ghost to show the moral nature, the criminal nature of that act, so that they take sides with God against themselves and view themselves as criminals. It is thus the Spirit of God that pierces by means of the Word of God to the heart, dividing the soul and the spirit and revealing that one is a criminal. He reveals convicts of righteousness. Every sinner I've met has his own plan of salvation. Did you know that? Maybe it's he doesn't beat his wife and that atones for his robbing the bank on Saturday night. He only gets drunk on Sundays, never on any other day, so he's able to give a good day's work to his boss. You find the ridiculous things that people hold as the plan of salvation by which they're living. God has a scale. Their good deeds go in on the right. They're bad on the left. If they're more good than bad, they'll be in heaven. Innumerable are the plans of salvation that men devise for themselves. And it is the work of the Spirit of God to reveal the total inadequacy of all of man's devisings. And that the only righteousness that will avail is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And it's because Christ has died and been buried and risen and ascended into heaven that we now have this certainty that the Spirit of God, when he is released by our witness and our prayer, will convict men of the total inadequacy of all the spurious forms in which they trust, and will shut them up to the fact that Jesus Christ in him alone has righteousness enough to meet the needs and demands of a holy God. He convicts of righteousness and of judgment. And of judgment. I could speak longer to that. Let me just hurriedly say this. It is the work of the Spirit of God to convict you as a child of God of sin. Did you know that? Even when you walk in the fullness of the Spirit, you will find that when by attitude or thought or deed or word you grieve the Holy Ghost, he convicts. He never ceases that ministry. There is no state or experience that you will ever attain in maturity in Christ where you are not subject to temptation and capable of sin. And there is no place in your journey or walk with the Lord that the Holy Ghost will not, when it is needed, convict you of that attitude or disposition or thought or word that grieves him. He is faithful to this ministry as long as we journey through time. There is also this convicting of righteousness, the need for it. How often it is that one feels he has attained to the state of that much fruit of which the Lord spoke in verse 8 of 15. And then the Lord shows us that we are not quite as patient as we ought to be, nor are we quite as understanding as we ought to be. And he shows us that wherever we are, we are where we ought to be. And it is the Spirit of God that continuously draws us out in pursuit of God and pursuit of Christ. This is a continuing ministry. Number six, pardon me, number five, is verse 13 of chapter 16. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak. Oh, the wonder of being guided into truth! I look back to those barren years of my life when all I could do was to collect the leaves off of other men's trees, the statements they'd made about the Bible, and my messages for the most part were just in a collection of the accumulated sayings of wise men I trusted and whose opinions I should give because I couldn't trust my own. But oh, how marvelous it is to come to the end of your trust in others, and you appreciate what they've written, but then you say, well now, Lord, is this so? And you know, it's quite an exhilarating experience when the Spirit of God reveals to you that one of your favorite commentators was wrong. You don't burn the commentary, you just rejoice that he was in the flesh too, but of course it's quite a similar experience only reversed when you have it revealed to you that some of your attitudes are wrong. And you must be equally willing to change. Oh, how marvelous it is that he will guide you into all truth. It's just the difference between reading a book with your eyes open, or trying to stare at what you've remembered, or with your eyes closed, trying to stare at the page though you can't see through the film over your eyes. It's quite, I say, a greater change is to have the Spirit of God begin to unveil and unfold the book to your own heart. He will guide you into all truth. Truth that is applicable to the needs of others, in your witness. My friend, you know, people need help so badly. They need help. What are you going to say to the man that comes with the world-shaking problem? What are you going to say to the man whose life has been twisted in war? Where do you find out? Oh, how interesting, how delightful it is in counseling to find the Holy Ghost guiding you into the problem, and then into the Word, and then into that which is going to meet the need. And you have nothing in yourself, all of him. And he said, when you come to stand before princes, don't dredge up your defense, for in that hour that you're to be there, he'll give you what you should say. He'll guide you. He'll lead you. This is his ministry. Now notice the sixth thing. And he will show you things to come. Every person here has problems of guidance. You wonder about your future. Perhaps some of you said, well, this means God is going to give me a blueprint of the path I'm to take. No, it isn't. God has never done that. You know, I got in the car at Packard Manse at Stoughton, Massachusetts yesterday afternoon, sat back and relaxed, and let the driver take me to the airport. I didn't ask to see the path or the plan or to check the road or the routing. I didn't care. It was his responsibility. I was leaving, and I figured they'd bend every effort to get me out of town on time. So I just sat there and relaxed and paid no attention to it at all. It was marvelous that I could, I didn't need to preview the path. I could just trust the driver. Well, now, God has never promised that he's going to give you a preview of the path you're to take. He didn't say that. You'll walk by faith. But you know, we often come to corners, five corners and more, and we're perplexed and confused, and we don't know where to go. How marvelous it is that he'll show you things to come. He'll lead you today in that decision. I have found that one of the sweet ways of his leading is by rest. And I have taken for personal rule, let the peace of God rule in your heart. And if there are two things presented, and I don't have peace about either, I do neither. And if I have peace about one, I do that. And if I start one way in having peace, then I back up. I'm going to let the peace of God rule, because he will show me things to come. He will guide. Every decision you make is an important decision. How glad you should be that there is someone that knows the path, who sees the end from the beginning. And he is to guide you, and to lead you, and show you things to come. And he'll teach you which door to enter, which path to take. He knows the future. The future is known to him. Now he doesn't need to know...both of you don't need to know it, do you? He knows it, isn't that enough? You don't need to know it. All you need to do is know him. He knows it. And he'll show you things to come, because he the path that you should take, and he'll lead you in the path that you should take. And that is his ministry when he comes, to guide you, and counsel you, and direct you through the perplexities and the maze of life. Then the seventh thing that he will do is found in verse 14. He shall glorify me. He doesn't speak of himself in that sense in which he glorifies himself. The Spirit of God ministers to the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when he comes, he will glorify the Son, and he will put his finger on every relationship in your life, every attitude in your heart, every motive in your spirit that is there, that is contrary to his mind and his will and his purpose. For it is his intent, his committed work to glorify Jesus Christ. Not you. So many times people have said, I wanted to be filled with the Spirit that I can be a successful missionary, or I can be an effective pastor, or youth worker, or Sunday school teacher. He never ministers to glorify us. He always ministers at our expense to glorify Jesus Christ. And thus we are here to recognize that the Spirit of God, because of the sacrifice of Christ, not only would be with, as he was with that first company, but would be in us, and dwell in us, and fill us. And we are to take him to be the life of our life for this wonderful ministry. Therefore, in answer to your response to God's simple plan, simple preparation, the Spirit of God, who came to bring life and regeneration, wants to fill every area of your being, every part of your personality, with himself, and perform these gracious ministries. Now we're closing this evening, as the Lord wills. We'll go right on from here as to how you enter in to this relationship that our Lord Jesus died to make possible. These seven ministries are his provision for you, and you need him in all seven. Now shall we unite our hearts together in prayer? Let us stand. Brother McAfee, will you lead us in prayer? O blessed Spirit, who with the Father and the Son is to be worshiped as one God, world without end, we thank thee for the fresh view of Jesus and his word. And thy blessed work is to magnify him who is all in all in the Father's eyes, and ought to be all in all in the eyes of the Church. We trust that by thy gracious working, thou glorious Spirit, thou who art the bond between the Father and the Son, wilt thou magnify the Lord Jesus in our lives. And we pray that thou wilt so lead us into death, that the life also of Christ may be manifest in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Teach us therefore so to walk, our Father, and begin this very day to make real in our lives these glorious aspects of revealed truth, which the Holy Spirit by his mighty working is able to accomplish even in us. We yield to thee for this, our Father. Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit abide with each of us now and evermore. Amen.