this passage that I read to you
this morning in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 11 where it says, For
what man knoweth the things of a man, save the Spirit of man
which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth
no man but the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is the best
teacher that a man can have. No man knows the mind of God
but the Spirit of God. And if we ever know anything
of God, it will be that which the Holy Spirit teaches us. In
chapter 14 of the book of John, it says this, verse 16, Our Lord said, And
I will pray the Father, and he shall give you, he shall
give you, not pay to you, but shall give. He shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you forever. Verse 17, Even the Spirit of
Truth, that's the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither
knoweth him, but ye know him." He's speaking now to these select
ones that he chose unto himself, these apostles. He called every
one of those apostles. None of them volunteered. None
of them held up their hands and said, I want to join your happy
band. I want to join your company and
travel with you in your evangelistic tours. I volunteer my talent. I sing. I play the piano. I tell
jokes. I tell funny stories. They're fishermen for the most
part, unknown, common stall. And he called them
as he would. He called Peter from his nets in
his boat. And all he said was, was, follow
me. And they dropped everything and followed him. And they went everywhere with
him. They left their families. Some of them had families. Peter
had a family. He had a wife. Because the Bible
says his mother-in-law laid sick of a fever. Our Lord went in
and laid hands on her. So Peter left his family. Left everything. Left them for
three years, not three days. It wasn't no short campaign. Like some of these evangelists,
you know, go across the country and have these special meetings,
you know. I'll be there for three days. Ah, Peter went with them
for three years. Our Lord was with them. Listen
to what it says. The same about the Spirit is
the same with the Lord Jesus Christ. The world cannot receive the
Spirit of truth, because it seeth him not, neither
knoweth him. But ye know him, for he dwelleth
with you, and shall be in you, this Holy
Spirit, to teach you. So I'm not going to leave you
comfortless. I'm going to leave the Spirit here. And look in
verse 26 of this same chapter. It says now, But the Comforter,
which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I said unto you. Now, over here in the third chapter,
of the book of Revelation is another passage that I'll read
in light of that. In this third chapter and the
third verse, God sends an angel to the church
of Sardis. And unto the angel, the angel is the preacher. So God sends
this revelation through John to the angel, the preacher of
the church in Sardis. But in this second verse is what
I want you to see, or I mean the third verse. He says to him,
Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, who fast and repent. What you have received and what
you have heard. Now read again that verse in
I Corinthians 2 where it says, What man knoweth the things of
a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him. Even so the
things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. Now we
have received not the Spirit of the world, which is the opposite
of the Spirit of God, but the Spirit which is of God, that
we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. we might know the things, the
knowledge, the knowledge of the things that are freely
given to us of God. Now, the knowledge of these gifts are freely given,
the knowledge of Now, I think I said to you this morning that
we cannot savingly know the things of God by just reading about
them. Neither can they be taught to
us from a book. The head learns by nature But
the heart must learn by the grace of God. The way to know the things of
God is for you and I who make a confession of being
saved and sanctified. chosen by God in Christ before
time ever was. And here in time, God found us
and called us. And the Holy Spirit is in us
and with us to teach us the things of God and the truth of God.
And the way to know the things of God is for that which is written
in the book of God to be also written upon the heart by the same Spirit that wrote
the book. It is the Spirit that writes
the book. under the inspiration of the
Spirit of God, holy men of old, inspired of God, moved by the
Spirit, penned the truth in that which we call the Bible. And
that which is written in this book can't be learned with just
our head. It's got to be taught to us. by the Spirit of the living God.
These truths concerning that we might know the things that
are freely given unto us of God, these truths, unshakable, unalterable,
precious, lasting truths of God concerning what God has done
for us in Christ Jesus must be written. upon the heart of flesh. Now, I think I said this morning
that I have heard of faith. I heard about faith. I heard
preachers preach about faith, but I never knew faith until
I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord,
and then I knew something. And again, what is true without
faith, or what is true with faith, is also true with the forgiveness
of sins. I never knew anything about the
forgiveness of sins. I had heard about forgiveness
of sins, but I didn't know anything about forgiveness of sins until
I was, by the grace of God, washed in the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And then I found out by the Spirit
something about the forgiveness of sins, that they were blotted
out, and if they were blotted out, they couldn't be written
down again. And that he said, their sins
and iniquities will I remember no more. And when I understood
the way of salvation by substitution, that my sins were in the infinite
wisdom of God gathered up in a bundle, my past and present
and future was all lumped together and laid upon my sinless sacrifice
and he paid what was due my sins. He paid exactly the amount that
was due by way of punishment and I'm debt free because he
paid that for me. So when I was washed in the blood,
I found out something about the forgiveness of sin. Now, I read
about justification by faith, but I was never justified till
by faith I received the Lord Jesus Christ as my righteousness. Now, these things I learned.
and was taught, I believe, by the Spirit of God because I didn't
get them by reading the book. I didn't get them by reading
the Bible. I got them from Him who taught
me. And the reason I know that it
was the Spirit of God is because that which I have received was
given to me by Him And the same spirit who gave these things
to me made me to understand these things, and now I not only understand
them, but I enjoy them. When you enjoy these truths,
it's because the Spirit of God has enlightened you and taught
you these truths. And they're with you forever.
You never give them up. You hold fast to them. You're
not going to abandon them. They're written on the fleshly
tables of your heart. Well, ask the Spirit of God to
enable you to receive the things of God freely. And when you possess
them, That's when you'll know them. Paul said, I know whom I have believed. How did he know that? The Spirit
of God taught him that. In Damascus, he was there for
three years. He said, I did not get these
things from Gamaliel. Neither did I get them second-handed
from Peter or John or Andrew or any other disciple. He said,
when God unhorsed me on the road to Damascus, he sent me over
in this particular place in Arabia for three years. And he said, God taught me these
things. The Holy Spirit taught me these
things. So he says, I know whom I have
believed. I know whom? He said, I know
the person whom I have believed. And he said, I am persuaded,
I am convinced that he, this person, is able to keep what
I have committed unto him against the day of judgment. I know it! I enjoy it! I revel in it! That's what he said. He said,
I'm determined. I'm determined to know nothing
of your conversation, of your jabbering, save Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. The Holy Spirit taught him that. He enjoyed that. Everywhere he
went, that's all he talked about. He said there's nothing else
to talk about. Nothing else to know. If you know this, there's
nothing else you can know. Over and beyond this. The Spirit
taught him that. So, if you and I desire to know
more of the infinite preciousness of these gifts, that we might
know the things that are freely given to us of God, then we go
to the Spirit of God, see? Even so, the things of God knoweth
no man but the Spirit of God. He knows these things. He knows
the mind of God. He teaches these things. The Holy Spirit is the great
teacher. There is no instructor. like
the Holy Spirit. His knowledge surpasses all other
knowledge. Why? Because he knows the mind
of God. No one else knows the mind of
God save the Spirit of God. He knows it. And he was given
to us to be in us and to be with us, to teach us, all God's children,
The Bible says, shall be taught. They'll find out who Christ is
and what he's done, why he's done it, where he's at and what
he's doing. The Spirit will teach them that. They'll grow in that. They'll enjoy it. He knows the mind of God. There
is no being taught effectually except the Spirit. of the living
God teaches you and I. He'll write these proofs on the
fleshly tablets and tables of our heart, and they'll be so
indelibly imprinted that they can never be erased. I give unto them eternal life,
and they shall never perish. That never perish shall never
be erased. People, in our day, the world's
full of people talking about a little old sissified Jesus. who's trying to do something
but he can't do it because people won't let him do it, save you
one day and then you're lost the next day. When the Spirit
of God teaches you who Christ is and what he's done, you'll
understand what I'm talking about when I say they shall never perish. They'll never be lost. if Christ
saves them. It depends on who your Savior
is. If you saved yourself, you will
lose it. But if God saves you, you won't
lose it. If your salvation is by accident,
it won't amount to much. But if God saves you on purpose, then you will be saved. You must feed on these things
to have full enjoyment of them. They must be constantly set on
the table before you. You can't always have milk and
bread, soak up your bread and milk and
your oatmeal and pablum and things for babies. You've got to have
the food and the truth of God laid upon the table that you
can feed upon it, that you might have full enjoyment
of it. The things of God are best known
by a personal enjoyment of them. You can't know meat and drink
except by living upon them, unless you eat the meat and drink the
drink. Then you know something about
what meat is and what drink is because you eat and drink them
every day. Well, I myself, I don't need
a sermon or a lecture on bread. All I want to know, I know about
bread. I eat bread every day. I know all there is to know about
it. I need to know about spiritual
matters. I need to know about the bread
of God. I'm the bread of life, the Lord
Jesus said. That's the bread I need to know
about. And the only way I can know about
it is when it's laid before me and the Spirit applies it to
me. And then I can know it and enjoy
it. What we need, all of us, is to
go to the high school of heaven. We talked before church about
the schools and how they used to be and how
they are and how men imagine them to be here in the future. But we need to go to the high
school of heaven. There's no tuition to pay either. You go to college and even to
high school or even to the first grade. You may not have to, at
the outset, pay some tuition, but before that child gets through
the twelfth grade, it'll cost you a lot of money. And it's
not over with yet. If they go on to college, there's a tuition there that
you won't believe. It goes on and on and on. But the school I'm talking about,
it's all free. Ain't no tuition there. Ain't
no tuition. Anybody that wants to enroll
can enroll there. because it's a place where sinners
are made saints. That school is the school of
God, and the Spirit of God is the teacher. And there's one
subject that he dwells upon, and that's God's Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he teaches about him, and
he's a good instructor. You see, everything's free at
this school or this university. It's where we learn about repentance
and we learn about faith. We learn that eternal life is
the gift of God in its reception and it's the gift of God at the
end of our lives. It's always a gift. When we first,
by faith, receive eternal life, it's a gift of God. And if we
live to be ninety or a hundred years old and about to die, it's
still the gift of God. We learn these things in the
school of God. And this school is a great school.
The diploma that you get when you graduate from this school
is a diploma of humbleness and humility. Because if you know anything,
when you come out of this school, if you know anything, it's because
you've been taught it. If you possess anything, it's
been given to you. As a matter of fact, when it's
all said and done, in regard to you and I, who are believers
and followers of the Lamb of God, we're children of charity. Everything
we have has been given to us. The clothes on your back have
been given to you by God. They're furnished to you by the
Lord's grace, the Lord's favor. The bread that's in your mouth
from time to time is only the provision of his love. I'm telling you, When you come
out of this school being taught by the Spirit of God, you will
find out that a proud saint is a contradiction of terms. There
is no such thing as a proud saint. What has he got to be proud of?
What do you have that you have not received? Absolutely nothing. You see,
this salvation of God is so arranged where God gets all the glory,
and he doesn't leave a yard of space for you to boast. Everything
you have, you got from him. The knowledge of what you got
from him, the effect of it, tends to make the individual a generous,
person. He's not a tightwad. He's not
stingy. He'll give what he has freely
and generously. If the Spirit of God has made
us to know the things of God that was freely given to us of
God, we'll be generous in trying to tell somebody else what God
has done for us in Christ. We don't believe that the grace
of God is a secret that only we know, and we're going to keep
it to ourselves. We've got a monopoly on it. We
are made generous. What we've got we receive from
God, and it's a free gift of God. We didn't earn it, not entitled
to it. It's not a prize given to us
for a race we've run and won. It's given to us not worthy of it. And we're free
to give it away and tell others about it. Kill it out! You say, well, I'm not as creative
as some people are. I don't have a wealth of illustrations
that I can use to set forth what's in my heart. I've got no unique
or particular style that I can, in language or in the use of
words, that would make me appealing or what I've said to other men. What can I do? Well, just all
you've got to do is tell what you know. Tell what God's taught
you in plain words. Five words spoken in the Spirit
have far more power than two hours of sail. No man can tell you what he doesn't
know. But if the Spirit has told him
and taught him something, and he knows something, he's able
to tell it. That's what I'm talking about.
No one knows the mind of God but the Spirit of God. May He
be our Teacher. and teach us some of the things
that I've said, that we might know the things that are freely
given to us of God. What do you have that you did not receive? everything I have, everything
I hope to have, I've received from Him. Paul
said, I'm a debtor. I'm a debtor to the Greeks. I'm
the debtor to all men. I'm a debtor to God. The Lord
help us and teach us. We might know the things of God,
that they're all free gift. This stand will be dismissed.