The Voice Of The Spirit: A. W. Tozer Sermon (Transcript)

Then in the 22nd chapter, “And the Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ Let him that heareth say, ‘Come.’ Let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.”

Let us pray. O Lord, high and lifted up, we look away from earth to Thee. We look away from weak man who fails every moment to Thee who cannot fail. O Lord, show Thyself to us tonight. We beseech Thee, Lord, the Lord in our presence. We know that, but it isn’t enough that we know it. We pray that we may sense it and even feel it, and know that Thou art here. Work Thy work, we pray, through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Living In A Lost World

Now we are living in a lost world. I mean by that that the inhabitants of the world are lost. Not lost romantically, nor lost poetically, but lost really, and lost individually. A lot of our religious singing makes a very beautiful picture of a lost world, and the world is never to blame. They are just unfortunately lost, and the sun is going down, and the birds are singing, and all that, and it’s very lovely.

But there is nothing more poetical about being lost than there is about having cancer. There is nothing that is in any way artistic or beautiful about it. To be lost is to be lost individually. The human race is lost only because the individual that composed the human race is lost, and we are lost by a mighty, calamitous visitation of woe which all the eloquence of human speech could never describe.

The worst part about our lostness is that it’s inside of us. I’m speaking of us as people born in the world. There’s no trouble with the world and its lostness is that the lostness is inside. A man who is lost in the forest and knows his loss may find his way out, but a man who is lost in the forest with amnesia and can’t remember where his name or where he belongs is lost with a lostness that’s not only external, but it’s internal too. Human beings are lost with an internal lostness that makes them insensible to the fact that they are lost, or at least they scarcely know that they are lost.

The Unquestionable Reality of Lostness

Now that’s a settled matter. That’s not something that we debate. That’s not a question that we are to go to the theologians and inquire. Doctors are people lost. Either the doctor repeats the scriptures back to you, or the doctor is not a trustworthy man. Therefore it’s not debatable, it’s not something that’s old-fashioned and believed by a few. It is a fact as real as gravitation or mathematics or any other fact. It is a fact that the world is lost, but it’s also a fact that though it is lost, it is not yet forsaken.

God has made through the blood of the everlasting covenant reparation for our sins, and by the atoning blood that was shed for us, He has atoned and made it right, and Christ is the propitiation for our sins. So now the world is not forsaken. It is lost, and its lostness is deep inside of it, and mostly it doesn’t know it’s lost. But God knew it was lost, and God went ahead and God found a way and love found a way to redeem us and make full reparation, I say, and pay the full price so that man can be redeemed.

And so now God is speaking, and He’s speaking by many voices. He’s speaking by conscience, He’s speaking by His love, He’s speaking by reason, He’s speaking by death, He’s speaking by the word, He’s speaking by His Spirit. And of all the clear, loud, easily distinguished voices, the voice of the Spirit is the clearest and the loudest.

And it is the voice of the Spirit that gives grave and serious meaning to any other voice. For not all the theologians of the world could argue man lost or show that there was a way back unless the Holy Spirit was present to make the people see that in your heart.

The Transformative Knowledge of the Holy Spirit

It’s possible to see a thing with our intellect and never know it in our heart at all. You see, there are two kinds of knowledge. There’s the knowledge that you have in your mind and the knowledge you’ve lived through, the knowledge you’ve experienced inside of you. And the Holy Ghost has a wonderful, mysterious way of making you live into and live through the knowledge that you only previously held in your mind.

And so God says, “Adam, where art thou?” and “Ho, everyone thirsteth, come ye,” and “Come unto me, all ye that are heavy laden.” But it’s the Holy Spirit that gives meaning to these calls and to these voices.

Now, our Lord Jesus said in the text which I first read in the 16th of John, when He, the Holy Spirit, comes, the Comforter comes, when He comes, now He was to do three things when He came. When He comes, He came to confirm. Now hear me, He came to confirm. He came to confirm three things. He came to confirm the words of Jesus and the works of Jesus and the person of Jesus.

When the man called Jesus of Galilee walked in the earth, He spoke the loftiest words that ever had been spoken by any religious teacher ever since the beginning of time, and He made the most astonishing, astounding claims for Himself. Now, I’m reasonably familiar with the writings of the great religious teachers of the world, of the non-Christian religions. And I can say to you, and scholarship will back it up, that nobody ever made the claims for himself that Jesus made.

No other teacher said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” No other teacher said, “I saw Satan fall from heaven.” No other teacher said, “He is in the bosom of the Father.” No other teacher said, “I and the Heavenly Father are one.” No other teacher said, “I go to prepare a place for you in My Father’s house.” No other teacher said it.

No other teacher said that when the end would come, that He, the teacher, would sit upon His throne, judging the nations of the earth, and before the throne the nations should be gathered. No other teacher ever dared to say that. And no teacher said, “Destroy this body, and in three days I’ll raise it again.” No teacher dared to say it.

The Holy Spirit’s Confirmation of Christ

And no teacher ever said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man cometh to God except by Me.” These were astounding claims, these were lofty words, and the Holy Spirit came as a silent, penetrating, immediate witness to give confirmation to Christ’s words. Now, it’s not scholarship that confirms Christ’s words, and it’s not theological knowledge. It is the penetrating, wonderful word of the Holy Ghost, the penetrating presence of the Holy Ghost that gives power to the word.

Then there were the works of Jesus. Jesus Christ, nobody could deny that Jesus performed miracles, and you will notice that His enemies did not try to deny it. They did not say, “You’re all fools, there’s no miracle here.” Seeing the man that was standing healed among them, they could say no thing against it. So nobody denied that there were miracles there. The only thing they did was deny that God was performing them. They said, “This is the devil, God never did this.” And yet there was no denying the miracles they had been there.

He had raised the dead. The dead man and the dead girl had been raised from the dead. He had made the water of the lake go still. He had stilled the way of the winds. He did give men eyesight that didn’t have eyesight before. He did turn water into wine. He did these things. And now the Holy Ghost has come to confirm the quality of His works and to show and to verify the divine quality of these works and to prove before men that they were of God.

And then the person of Jesus Christ, the person of Christ. Who else is like this man? Who else ever lived in the world like this man? It was called Jesus. The Holy Ghost came and did a confirmatory work. He raised Him from the dead. That was one thing that He did. And the mysterious witness is now here. Christ is no longer on trial. He was on trial when He walked among men, but He is on trial no longer now, but men are on trial before Him.

There was a day when He stood before men with handcuffs on His wrists, ropes tied around His wrists, and He was being judged before the great of this world. That time is long over.

The Ascension and the Holy Spirit’s Witness

The Holy Ghost raised Him from the dead. Then He went to heaven, and the Spirit of God came, and incidentally, in the churches, this is Ascension Sunday. And when He ascended to the right hand of God, the Holy Ghost came and confirmed the person of Jesus Christ so that He proves that Christ is who He said He was. For you remember, there was a little doubt in the minds of people until the Holy Ghost had filled them, and the place was shaken, and the cloud came, and the tongues of fire sat upon all of them.

And then Peter got up and said, “Ye men of Israel, this same Jesus whom ye crucified, God hath made Him Lord and Christ.” That was confirming the person of Jesus, this very God of very gods. So now the whole matter of the religious question has been transferred from the schoolroom to the heart. There is a throne where a man sits, and that man is Jesus Christ the Lord.

The Inviolable Throne of Christ

There is a throne where men cannot come. There is a throne where all men cannot come who might want to dethrone Jesus Christ the Lord. They cannot come there, and that man who sits on that throne is invested with authority and power and judgment and justice so that He is able to wield all authority in heaven and on earth. That man is Jesus Christ the Lord, and the Holy Ghost is here as His witness, to witness to Him within the heart.

Even Jesus, when He spoke, spoke to the ears of the people. But the Holy Ghost penetrates through to the hearts of the people and speaks to their hearts, and He speaks in a way that even Jesus, the man, did not speak. He told us that it was better for us that He went away, because when He went away, He would send the Comforter, and when He came, He would penetrate. He would come and reprove, that is, convict and convince the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

The Holy Spirit’s Role in Conviction

So now this Holy Witness is present, and who in all things speaks for Christ. As you treat Him, you treat Christ. As you treat the voice of the Spirit, you treat Christ. The fate of every one of us depends not upon historic evidence. Remember that.

If you had to take historic evidence and figure out whether Jesus was the Son of God or not, the scholars and those who knew how to take evidence and draw conclusions from evidence might make up their mind that Jesus was the Son of God. But the simple-hearted and the unlearned of the world could not do it, for they would know nothing of the laws of evidence, and they could not possibly arrive at a proper conclusion concerning Jesus, even though the facts were given to them.

But the Holy Ghost leaps past all the reasonings and all the adding up of evidence and the taking of testimony. The Holy Ghost leaps past that to the conscience, and He takes the matter of Jesus and man’s relation to Jesus out of the realm of reason altogether and puts it in the realm of conscience and of morals. So our fate does not depend upon historic evidence but upon the invisible presence witnessing to the inner life and our response to that inner voice.

Now that inner voice will make use of the historic facts as I am tonight, but it does not depend upon reason working on historic facts. When a man stands, as I believe I stand tonight in the power of the Holy Spirit to speak to men, the Holy Ghost is with that man, and He confirms the word with signs.

The Spirit’s Selective Work

The signs may be external or they may be in the heart and conscience of the man, and it’s the heart and conscience that I’m particularly interested in. And while the man speaks, the Holy Ghost waits and watches and decides and selects and waits and selects and decides and watches. Always the Holy Ghost watches, for He is selecting a people out from the people of the world. He’s selecting a people for His name, and He watches and waits, and He’s all wise, so He can make no mistake.

And you can’t deceive Him, remember that. You can’t deceive the Holy Ghost. You can deceive the preacher. I’ve been taken in beautifully by many a man who told me he was converted when he wasn’t, and I have believed him, but the Holy Ghost is never taken in.

The Indisputable Presence of the Holy Spirit

He’s never deceived because He is God. He is the invisible presence. He is the most important one here tonight. He is here, and being here, He is taking the words that I speak to you and lifting them out of their ordinary human place and level and is making them divine.

And remember that as you treat them, you will treat Him. “Let us hear what the Spirit says, and the Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come,’ and when the Holy Ghost is come, He will convince.” Now I want to point out that He will not deal with minor matters. People try to escape this penetrating work of the Holy Ghost, and they say, “I’m a seeker after light.”

Seeking the True Light

I hear that. “I’m a seeker after light.” I do not believe, since the Holy Ghost came, that anybody can say honestly and not be a hypocrite, “I’m a seeker after light.” The light has come, and the light of the world is Jesus, and “I am the light of the world, and if any man will follow Me, he shall not walk in darkness.” And the Spirit of the living God confirms the fact that Jesus is the light of the world, and the man or woman, particularly the young people and students who imagine that they are seeking the light, are simply deceived, for they’re not seeking light, they’re seeking darkness. They’re not seeking light.

The light has already shone. What would you think of a man standing out here on a vacant lot at 10 o’clock this morning with the light shining down and the temperature at 70, and you went to him and said, “What are you doing here?” He said, “I’m looking for the light.” You would say, “Why, man, are you blind?”

“No, I’m not blind, but I’m looking for the light. I’m seeking light.” You would know that he was either lying or else was off in his mind because no man seeks the light when the sun is shining down in brilliance upon us. And Jesus Christ is the light of the world, and the Holy Ghost is here, and He’s not deserted the world, and He’s not left it, and He’s here, and He’s here tonight.

The Holy Spirit’s Clarion Call

And He’s here saying deeply inside of us, “Jesus is the light of the world. He’s the light. Come unto Him. Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.” Hear what the Spirit says. And the Spirit is saying, “I am the light. Jesus is the light of the world, so don’t tell me you’re seeking light.” If you’re seeking light, you’ll go straight to Jesus Christ, for He is the light of the world.

Others say, “I am not sure about baptism. I’m not sure which mode of baptism is correct.” The Holy Ghost never said that He would ever settle or argue with men or reason with men about water. It’s not a matter of water. He said sin and righteousness and judgment, that’s the matter that counts. I believe I have what I believe to be the right form of baptism.

But I also know that the Holy Ghost doesn’t spend any time arguing with men about baptism. He does not come into the world to conform anybody’s beliefs about baptizo, whether it’s to dip, to plunge, or to sprinkle. He comes into the world to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. And He insists on moral sincerity. And He presses home three things, and He presses them home. He penetrates, He gets through.

The Holy Spirit’s Diagnostic Power

He’s like a pungent fragrance in a room. He’s like an x-ray. He goes clear through and through. The doctors have a word, two Greek words joined in one, meaning know and meaning through, diagnosis, meaning look through, know through. And the Holy Ghost is diagnostic. He goes clear through, He knows us clear through. And nobody can get away from that fact. He pierces deeper than the sword that pierced Jesus.

If somebody wonders about that, let me give you the facts. I’m not a quoter of Greek as a rule. If it isn’t no good in English, it probably won’t be in Greek anyhow. And usually, a young fellow quotes Greek, he’s proving that he’s been to Bible school. But let me point out something from the Greek.

Let me point out to you that there were two places in the Bible where a certain word is used. I’ll let Brother Gray tell you what word it is. But there’s a certain place in the scriptures where a certain word is used. One place is translated into English, “and a soldier with a spear pierced His side.” It’s the word pierce. It’s the verb pierce. And that word pierce, you know what it is, that long, sharp sword. And they threw it into His breast, and it went in there and then quivered and shook and got still. And all around it, there gushed out the water and the blood. That’s the word pierce.

Later on, when He’d risen from the dead and that wound was forever staunched, and He was a glorified man and went to the right hand of God and sent down the Holy Ghost, the Spirit fell upon them, and Peter got up and began to preach. And as he preached, they were pricked in their hearts.

Now, that word pricked is a Greek word meaning sharper and further in than pierced. So that when the Holy Ghost spoke to the people and pierced their hearts, they were pierced deeper than Jesus was pierced. Jesus was pierced with a spear, and they were pierced with the words of the Holy Ghost. And the Greek word for pierced or pricked is a stronger word than the Greek word for pierced. You can look it up and find it yourself. It’s a stronger word. It means that the word of God went deeper into the consciences of the hearers than the spear went into the bosom of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit’s Conviction on Sin

That’s the way the Holy Spirit does. Three vital things He pierces us about: sin, righteousness, and judgment. Sin, because they believe not on Me, and that’s led some mistaken men to teach that unbelief is the only sin. No, unbelief is a sign and a proof of sin. Unbelief is a sin, too, but unbelief is a sign of the presence of sin, for faith, my brethren, is a moral thing, not an intellectual thing.

If the preachers of Toronto were to hear this pronouncement tonight and were to begin to preach it and understand it, it would transform Toronto’s churches within a month. That faith is not an intellectual thing; it is a moral thing. It is a thing of conscience and of life and of living and of the Holy Ghost, and not a matter of reason at all. He said He will pierce, He will convict the world of sin because they believe not on Me.

He will show that their unbelief is the result of their sin. I say faith is a moral thing; it’s not intellectual, and no man can believe savingly on Jesus Christ except by a gift of God. God must give you a gift to believe savingly on Christ, or you cannot believe. That’s why it’s such a tragic thing to take people in by cards and by handshakes and not know whether they’ve truly believed or not.

Faith as a Divine Gift

For faith is a gift of God to a penitent man. When the Holy Ghost pierces as Jesus’ breast was pierced with my sin, and I tremble and groan under my sin, then God enables me to believe on His Son. Back a generation ago, they were saying it’s no longer the sin question, it’s the Son question. Everything depends upon whether you believe that Jesus is the Son of God or not.

Sin doesn’t matter, they were saying in fundamentalist circles. I never believed it and I believe it less now. The problem is not the Son question at all. That was taken care of when the Holy Ghost came.

The Sin Question and Spiritual Transformation

The problem is the sin question, my brethren. “If any man will do My will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God or not,” said Jesus. Anybody who will believe in Jesus Christ and who wills to do the will of Christ, he’ll know when the Son question is settled. The Holy Ghost settled the Son question whether Jesus was the Son of God or not.

He settled that when He came down at Pentecost. And so it’s the sin question now that matters. You will believe that Jesus is the Son of God all right when the Holy Ghost has pierced your heart with your own sin. You’ll believe it.

You won’t believe it because you’ve read five books to prove it. You’ll believe it because that’s the Holy Ghost’s business, to witness to the person and works and words of Jesus and confirm that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. Unconfessed sin makes saving faith impossible. People struggle to believe and they struggle vainly because they’re hanging on to their sin.

The Incompatibility of Sin and Faith

The man who loves his sin cannot believe. You cannot be black and white at the same time. You cannot be dark and light at the same time. You cannot be sick and well at the same time. You cannot be good and bad at the same time. You cannot be going north and south at the same time. And so you cannot believe while you have sin in your heart, for they are the antithesis of one another. “But if any man will do My will, he shall know.”

And the moment I have listened and yielded to the penetrating voice of the Holy Ghost about my sin, I’ll believe He’s the Son all right immediately, and I’ll believe on Him.

The second thing, when He has come, He will pierce and convince and convict about righteousness because I go to My Father. Conspicuous proof of the world’s moral condition is that one righteous man alone stood in the world, and they wouldn’t have Him. One righteous man came to the world, and they wouldn’t have Him.

The Righteousness of Christ and the World’s Rejection

The righteous men who have lived in the world have been unrighteous enough to make it comfortable for the rest. And if they weren’t sinful enough and unrighteous enough to make it comfortable, they usually got thrown in jail or burnt at the stake or something else. But Jesus Christ was the one supremely holy man, and they said, “We won’t have this man to reign over us.” The one righteous man only could stay 33 years. Then they killed Him and hounded Him out of the earth, and God raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand.

The voice of the Spirit today is reckoning. Better for sin-lovers, my brethren, better for sin-lovers never to have been raised from the dead. You know, to quote an unbelieving Persian poet in a Christian sermon, how does it go, ‘O love, could you and I with him conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire? Would not we shatter it to bits and then rebuild it nearer to the heart’s desire?'” That was the cry of the Persian poet, the Sufi.

And we’ve all wished that we might take this sorry scheme of things and redo it. But if I could redo some things, I think I’d want to redo them. If I could redo Ashman, I’d want to have done it and said, “O God, and never let him be born or let him be, as Job said, carried from his mother’s lap to the grave.” How terrible to live in the world, to breathe God’s air and bask in God’s sunshine and drink the water and eat the food of the earth and live and be comfortable in the earth and sin every minute of the day and then die.

The Inevitability of Resurrection and Moral Accountability

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the wicked dead didn’t have to rise again? If God made man in His own image and gave him more responsibility, and even God Almighty cannot change that. Man, because he’s a moral creature and because he stands before moral laws and is accountable to moral laws, living and dying, man must face and answer to moral laws. And the incident of death is not the end for man, whether he’s a Christian or not, it’s not the end for man.

Therefore, men must rise again. “And the dead in Christ shall rise first, and then all they that sleep in the dust of the earth shall rise.” And there shall be a resurrection of damnation as well as of righteousness and resurrection of grace. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if men like Ashman could die and never rise again and sleep like their dog or like a horse and never rise from the dead? But I couldn’t change it, and I wouldn’t be able to change it.

When I was a young fellow, I lived next door, I was about 16, to a man, his first name was Thurman, and he was older than I, he was probably in his middle 20s, he was a married man, maybe his late 20s, and I made quite a hero out of him. I loved him a lot and he taught me telegraphy so that I could send and receive messages on the telegraph instrument. He talked to me a lot about railroads. He and I went to a meeting one time.

And we sat down in that meeting and I wasn’t saved, and he wasn’t saved. They had personal workers coming around, and the personal workers would go to each one and say, “Are you a Christian?” And after we’d gone back two or three nights, my friend Thurman rather chuckled and said, “Oh, I don’t want to be bothered with these personal workers. He said, ‘I’m going to fix them tonight.'” So when they came around to me, I stood beside him and said, “Are you a Christian?”

I said, “No.” And then I had to take it, you know, a long lecture and pleading. And when they came to my friend next to me, Thurman, and said, “Are you a Christian?” He said, “Yes.”

They said, ‘Thank God,’ and went on, left him alone. He got out of it, but he lied. He lied to the Holy Ghost. He had a heart condition. He had been a railroad man. Of course, that’s where he’d used his telegraphy. And one day I came home and found my mother in tears. And I said, “What’s the matter?” I thought of members of the family. She said, “Nothing wrong with the family, but,” she said, “Thurman died.” He sat with his watch in his hand in his living room. Being a railroad man, every time he’d hear a train whistle, he’d wonder what train that was, and it was his own time.

The Final Moments and a Prayer

He pulled out his watch, talking to his sister, and said, “Number six is on time.” She grunted a reply. I suppose she was used to hearing it. And then she spoke to him, and he didn’t answer. She turned around to him, and his head was bowed over his watch. She went and touched him, and he was dead. He died sitting there in the chair.

I wasn’t a Christian. I had not yet been converted, but I loved this man. I went upstairs and got down on my knees in my bedroom, a sinner praying about a sinner. And I said, “Oh God, Thurman is dead. And I believe he’s in hell because I believe Thy words.”

A Heartbroken Realization

“But oh God, if it’s possible, won’t You please get him out of there? Get him out of hell, God, please,” I said. It was an ignorant pagan prayer, and it fell on the deaf ears of God. Thurman had had his chance. He’d heard the preaching of the gospel, but he died looking at a watch, the symbol of the passing of time.

And I got up heartbroken from my knees, went to my bed, and tried to sleep, knowing that my friend was in hell, and I know it tonight. I know that if Samuel and Job and Daniel were here, all of their prayers day and night around the clock for a year wouldn’t get him out. Sin and righteousness and judgment.

The Inescapable Judgment

And judgment. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was no judgment? And yet, could you? Would you want to live in a heaven in the universe where there was no judgment? I would not. I want God to exercise His holy judgment in the earth, even if it cuts into my own family and into my own heart.

I want God to purge and purify His universe and make it a holy place in which He and His angels and redeemed can live. I want heaven to be a holy place where He can take His purified bride on His arm and lead her into the presence of the Father and say, “Father, this is My bride composed of red and yellow, black and white around the world, who believed on Me and followed Me wherever I’ve gone.”

The Persistence of the Holy Spirit

And angels and seraphim and cherubim shall raise the chant, “True and righteous are Thy judgments, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.” Now, my brethren, the Spirit will persist. He will persist until one of two things happens. He will persist until you surrender and yield and believe on His Son actively.

He will persist until you surrender to His voice and say yes, or until the voice can no longer be heard. And when the voice can no longer be heard, you’ll think the voice is no longer sounding. It’s the death of the heart. When the heart dies and the troubling voice of the Spirit can no longer be heard, then we sinners imagine that things are all right and that they’ve heard wrong and that things aren’t as bad as they expected or thought.

The Silence of the Spirit and the Death of the Heart

They’ve let their hearts die and their conscience no longer can be pricked. And because they can’t feel anything and because the Holy Ghost’s penetrating, piercing words no longer bother them, they imagine that it’s all right now. When it’s not all right, it’s like the dying man who ceased to feel pain, that he ceased to feel pain because his body is dying and he’s near to the end.

And there comes a relief and even pleasure sometimes to the heart that the Spirit has worked on for a long time, and they’ve resisted and deceived and lied to God and gone back and deceived and lied again and promised and laughed it off later and kept on doing it and continued to do it.

And finally, little by little, the voice got weaker and weaker, and they thought the voice wasn’t heard anymore, or they began to wonder if it hadn’t been a mistake in the first place. No, it was no mistake. “I send the Holy Ghost, and when He has come, He will convict the world.” He didn’t say the church; the world, it’s the sinners of the world, it’s the unbelievers of the world He’s talking about.

A Plea for Spiritual Sensitivity

But when the heart dies, oh, how much better for you to die than to have your heart die. Pray to God that your heart won’t die. Better to live and hear the pain-filled or the voice that fills your heart with pain than to have a heart that can’t feel anything. Far better to feel pain and know that your body is all right, only temporarily in pain, than to be paralyzed so you can’t feel any pain.

And so is the heart and the conscience. The man who can still feel the sting of the Holy Ghost ought to thank God on his knees, for there are a lot of people in Toronto whose hearts are dead. They’re not against religion; they’re not for it; they’re dead. They died a long time ago.

The Walking Dead and the Call of the Holy Spirit

They’re zombies, walking dead men, like those men on the ship in the ancient mariner who stood up. The bodies stood up without souls in them, and the bodies went their work, did their work, pulled the ropes and did their work. Zombies, dead men standing on the deck. Only imagination, of course, but it’s an illustration of truth.

And the truth is that there are those who have said no to the Holy Ghost so long and so often, deceived themselves until the voices cease to be heard anymore, and they feel better now, even feel a pleasure. Some have deadened their hearts by disobedience, others by lust, others by love of money, others by love of pleasure, others by holding grudges they won’t give up, others by the unforgiving spirit, others by bitterness, others by a temper they can’t and won’t control, others by persistent gossip, whispering behind the backs, others by downright lying, others by dishonesty in business, others by personal filthiness of personal conduct. Little by little the voice dies, ceases to be heard anymore, because the heart’s grown deaf. “He that has ears to hear, let him hear.”

The Call to Spiritual Awakening

The plain implication is there are some who don’t have ears to hear. But if he that has ears, he better pick them up and listen. For the Spirit is calling, and Jesus Christ is calling. I have no doubt that He’s calling some here tonight, some of you who are half-saved, and some of you think you’re saved, and some of you wish you were saved, and some of you were once right with God, but your fellowship is broken and you’re far from Him tonight.

But the Spirit and the Bride are saying, “Come,” and when He is come, and He has come to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment, and to call men to Christ. And that entreating voice still sounds. I say again, a thousand times, thousand times better die against a wall by a firing squad tomorrow morning at six, than to die in your heart and walk around in Toronto and make money and live and eat and rejoice under the sun and yet be dead in your heart.

If you can hear the voice, happy are you. Lots of people can’t. Lots of people can’t. What are you going to do? Humble yourself, and the Lord will draw near thee. Humble yourself, and His presence will cheer thee. The Lord will not talk to the proud nor the scornful. Humble yourself and hear the voice to walk with God.

Related Posts

• The Triumphant Spirit of a True Christian: Zac Poonen (Transcript)
• Death of Compassion: David Wilkerson Sermon (Transcript)
• Zacchaeus Linked With Abraham And Melchizedek: Zac Poonen (Transcript)
• God Renews Us And We Enter His Rest: Zac Poonen (Transcript)
• Don’t Die in Your Wilderness: David Wilkerson (Transcript)