I need first of all to apologise to you for speaking on John Owen's teaching at this unathlete hour in the morning. The reason is not to give me the opportunity to tell you that Owen from his teenage years only took four hours of sleep every night, but exclusively because our seminary graduation is this afternoon and I feel it my duty to be there. And doing one's duty is something of which John Owen more than most would have greatly approved. Now, yesterday in our first study in Owen's teaching on the Holy Spirit, I suggested to you that there are really two elements in the way in which he expands the ministry of the Spirit. The first is to expand the ministry of the Spirit in the life of the head of the new creation, our Saviour Jesus Christ. And then the second is to expound the ministry of the Spirit, as I indicated, in the lives of the members of the new creation in the church which Christ has purchased with his own blood. Following Calvin in his exposition of the 135th Psalm, Owen sees the picture of the anointing of Aaron and the precious oil flowing down over his head, upon his shoulders and down over his garments as being a kind of picture of the way in which the Holy Spirit is given to the church. It is because the Spirit is given to the head that the Spirit is consequently given to the members. And it is, moreover, the same Spirit who is given to the head, the same Spirit who was on the head, who is thereafter also given to the members. Now, anyone who has ever read Owen's writings will, I think, immediately recognize that it's the second of these themes that statistically Owen gives much more place to. and he expounds at quite extraordinary length and in quite a variety of different ways the theme of the ministry of the Spirit in the life of the believer. I want to try and expound that or at least some elements of it in one distinctive way. But before we do that, let me underline for you that in Owen's teaching There are essentially two reasons why the Spirit is given to the church and to the believer. The Spirit is given first of all in order to bear witness to Jesus Christ. In many different parts of his writings, Owen sees this as in many ways the heart of the Spirit's ministry. He certainly sees that as the function of his own exposition of the ministry of the Spirit in the life of Jesus himself. The Spirit in bearing Jesus and in being born by Jesus is at the same time bearing witness to and marking out and stamping the Lord Jesus publicly as the Son of God and as the Messiah. But pursuing his ministry on the life of Jesus, the ministry of the Spirit in the life of the church, and the convicting ministry of the Spirit in the world, has distinctively, says Owen, the function of this testimony to the Lord Jesus. For example, Owen pictures the disciples gathered together in the upper room as Jesus speaks to them. about the fulfillment of the promise of the coming of the Spirit. And Owen looks at these twelve ordinary, indeed poor and needy men, whom Jesus is sending out into the world and saying to them, you will be my witnesses. And he asks the obvious question, what is the value of the witness of these poor men? And answers with Scripture that apart from the co-witness of their testimony with the superior testimony of the Holy Spirit. Their witness will fall to the ground and be of no consequence. And so he sees this double entendre in what Jesus says to the disciples in John, when the counselor comes whom he will send from the Father the Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about me. But you also must testify, because you have been with me from the beginning." And Owen sees this parallel between the testimony of the disciples and the testimony of the Spirit. The disciples have been with Jesus from the beginning and therefore are qualified to be witness-bearers to Jesus. But the Spirit, in a far more profound sense, has been with him from the beginning. And he therefore bears the fundamental and authenticating witness to the Lord Jesus. And we find this vindicated, says Owen, in the rest of the New Testament. What Jesus says in John 16, 8-11 is fulfilled on the day of Pentecost and the New Testament church is conscious of the fact that the witness it bears is a witness that is born also and fundamentally by the Spirit. God has exalted Christ at His right hand as a Prince and Savior, says Peter in Acts 5.32, and both we and the Holy Spirit are witnesses. Similarly, says Owen in Hebrews 2.4, the salvation given to us has this witness, that God the Spirit testified to it by signs, wonders, and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. distributed according to His will. So there is, first of all, in Owen's thinking, this chief thrust that the ministry of the Spirit is the ministry of witnessing to the Lord Jesus. But there is a further thrust in what he says, and it, I think, can be summarized like this, that the presence of the Spirit among God's people is intended to supply the absence of Christ's bodily presence. The presence of the Spirit with God's people is intended to supply the absence of Christ's bodily presence. Says Owen in language that was obviously peculiarly relevant to his own time. Jesus Christ has only one vicar on earth. That is, the Holy Spirit whom he has given. And again, rather picturesquely, he says, there is only one relic of the body of Jesus Christ left for men in this world. And the Holy Spirit is that relic. The Holy Spirit has been left behind, as it were, in order to supply for believers in all ages but was immediately supplied for believers in the first stage by the bodily presence of the Lord Jesus. And for that reason, Owen argues on the basis of Jesus' teaching in the upper room, we are at no disadvantage whatsoever, for example, in the 17th or the 20th century for that matter, because we have not seen the bodily presence of Jesus. we have Jesus' vicar, Jesus' relic, who supplies for us directly at the command of the Lord Jesus, all that Jesus himself supplies to his people. Now, in connection with the ministry of the Spirit in the life of the church, Owen draws attention to the fact that Jesus having born the Spirit, Jesus having been the recipient of the Spirit's ministry in incarnation through the course of His life, in the work of the atonement, and in the resurrection in which He says the Spirit who made His nature holy then made His nature glorious, adds one final stage to the mediatorial reception of the Spirit by our Lord Jesus Christ. He expounds Peter's teaching in Acts 2.33 when Peter tells us that Christ has been exalted to the right hand of the Father and has received the promised Holy Spirit. Owen understands that to mean that on his ascension to the right hand of the Father the Lord Jesus was anointed in a sense, anew with the Spirit. Not now in order to fulfill the work of atonement, but in order that now He might bestow the Spirit upon the church. One sees the ascension of Jesus, of course, in a sense, as His coronation. He is crowned and enthroned, and He receives gifts according to his father's promise, in order that he might pour out these gifts upon the church. That the church might be useful in the service of the kingdom of God and that the church might represent Christ to the world. I think Owen would have both been familiar with and appreciated John Cotton's illustration of the same principle. when he describes Pentecost and the outpouring of the gifts in the age of Pentecost as being illustrative of the fact that Jesus has been crowned as, when a monarch is crowned, unusual gifts are poured out upon the people. I remember when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. I was, I think, four or five years old. And all the children in my primary school received special gifts marking the coronation. And Cochran says, and one has indications of this also in the way in which Owen thinks about it, that this is the significance of the extraordinary outpouring of gifts on the day of Pentecost and in the establishing of the Christian church. These gifts are saying, Christ has been crowned as King. And now by His Spirit, having led captivity captive, He is pouring Himself into the church by the Spirit and pouring out His gifts on the church for the service of God's kingdom. And as a consequence of this, a direct consequence, Owen says that five things follow. Five things follow the outpouring of the Spirit in the life of the believer and in the life of the church. First of all, all saving light on Scripture depends upon the gift of the Spirit. It is only by the gift of the Spirit that men believe these Scriptures to be the Word of God with an infallible assurance. Second, all habitual grace is a consequence of the gift of the Spirit. Habitual grace to quicken the elect from their death and trespasses and sins. Thirdly, all supplies of actual grace in the life of the believer enabling believers to walk in universal obedience to their Lord are the consequence of the gift of the Spirit. Fourthly, all spiritual gifts in the church given for the nourishment of the body of Christ are the consequence of the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And fifthly, all comfort and encouragement and consolation that any believer may ever know in the trials and discouragements of his pilgrimage will depend similarly on the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now, as Owen expounds these things, he picks up this jewel of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and he examines it from a series of perspectives. The most obvious one and the one that he gives most extensive consideration to, and I suppose the one that is best known, is the way in which he considers the ministry of the Spirit in the work of the application of redemption. And that particularly is expounded, as you know, in Volume 3. But here's another way of thinking about the ministry of the Spirit, and it's the second way that I want to employ in our time this morning. He expands the ministry of the Spirit in the life of the believer by drawing attention to what he believes are the four chief characteristics of that ministry in any believer's life. And these four characteristics, which I'm going to reduce in one way or another to two, in order that we may get through the material, are these. He emphasizes the significance of the Spirit's indwelling, first of all, His unction, secondly, His presence as the earnest of our inheritance, thirdly, and fourthly, and finally, the significance of His presence as the seal of God. And I want, if I can, to try to bring together the first three of these, his indwelling, his unction, his presence as an earnest, under the general heading of the indwelling of the Spirit, and then to deal, secondly and separately, with the theme of the sealing of the Spirit. First of all, then, the indwelling of the Spirit. Owen, of course, emphasizes that the Spirit of God indwells every Christian believer. We do not understand, he says, how this is so, any more than we may understand how it was that the Spirit overshadowed the Virgin Mary and the conception of the Lord Jesus. But mysterious though this be, he says, It is one of the fundamentally attested teachings of the New Testament that the Spirit of the Living God dwells in the life of every Christian believer. And one of the things that Owen attains to underline in this context is that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a personal indwelling. It is the person of the Spirit who indwells the believer. And of course what he is wanting to draw out from that notion is that the identity of the one who indwells the believer is that he is the same one who was on the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this is, of course, fundamental to his understanding of the whole character and nature of the Christian life and the character and nature of Jesus' experience of the Spirit as the pattern and cause of our experience of the Spirit. The Spirit who indwells the believer is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an anonymous spirit. He is precisely identified as the Spirit who was on Jesus. The reason He supplies Jesus' bodily absence from us is that He brings to us everything, as it were, that is true of Jesus. He brings His own all the resources of the incarnate, crucified, buried, risen, ascended, and reigning Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of the intimacy of fellowship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit that the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the source and cause of all moral and spiritual transformation in the life of the believer. And the reason why that transformation that takes place in the life of the believer is a progressive conforming of the believer to Jesus Christ. Because the believer is one spirit with Jesus Christ in the sense that he actually shares with Jesus the presence of the Holy Spirit in his personal indwelling, in his life and experience. But having said that, Owen goes on to make what for him is a very fundamental and important distinction. He distinguishes between what he calls the indwelling of the Spirit as the Spirit of holiness and the indwelling of the Spirit as the Spirit of comfort. Now clearly he is not here saying that we are indwelt by two different spirits. Nor is he saying that there are two separate occasions on which a man may receive the Spirit. We receive the Spirit once for all, says Owen. But we receive the Spirit in all the plenitude of his personal indwelling. And as we try to understand the significance and the ministry of the Spirit as he indwells us, we come to recognize that he exercises his ministry in us in different ways, and those ministries may be identified in different ways. And particularly, he exercises his ministry as the spirit of holiness on the one hand and as the spirit of comfort on the other. And the reason Owen draws that distinction is because he wants to say this, But whereas the Spirit is always exercising the ministry of the Spirit of Holiness, He is not always exercising His ministry as the Spirit of Comfort. Put in, I think, more straightforward terms, what Owen is trying to say is this, that every activity of the Spirit in our lives has as its goal the production of holiness. One is able to bring within the ambit of the Spirit every joy and sorrow, every success and failure, every trial, every fulfilled ambition. There is no aspect of God's providential dealings with us that are not, as it were, caught up as an instrument of the Spirit to be used by him to produce holiness in the life of the believer. And the believer needs, says Owen, to be permanently conscious of the fact that the chief function of the Spirit in him, in the moral transformation of his life, is to create and to produce a holiness, a transformation into the image of Jesus. But in the context of that ministry, it is not always true that the Spirit comforts us. It is not always true, says Owen, that, for example, we are conscious of the presence of the Spirit as the Spirit of adoption. It is not always true that we live at the same levels of Christian assurance. It is not always true that we are consistently conscious of the Father's love toward us. And so he tries in this way to hold together the great fundamental axiom that every believer is indwelt by the Spirit, alongside what seems to him to be true both from Scripture and from experience. But although he is consistently exercising the ministry of the Spirit of Holiness, there may be ups and downs in the consciousness of the believer of the reality of his relationship to the Father, in the Son, and by the Holy Spirit. Well now, as Owen begins to develop the indwelling of the Spirit, He tells us that through the indwelling of the Spirit, there are three singular blessings that are brought to us. The first of them is that by the indwelling Spirit, we receive, as believers, direction and guidance. And this guidance, says Owen, can be divided into two parts. It is first of all moral and what he calls extrinsical. That is to say, moral in the sense that the Spirit directs us by the Word to the duties that we are to fulfill. Extrinsical in the sense that this is the operation of the Spirit through the testimony of Holy Scripture. This guidance that the Spirit gives us is first of all given to us in the Word that He has inspired for us. And His ministry in this regard, in enabling us to have the guidance of God, is not to provide us with new information, but to illuminate our minds and our understandings in order that we may grasp the principles that God has revealed to us in Scripture and with the help of the Spirit understand the ways in which these principles are to be applied to our daily Christian living and to the life of the fellowship of God's people in which we worship and with which we bear witness. So the guidance of the Spirit for Owen is in this sense moral and extrinsical, but also, he says, it is internal and efficient. Not only does the Spirit illuminate the believer through the Word, but also the Spirit guides and leads the believer in this sense, that by the Word he transforms the affections and the wills of believers, that they may embrace the teaching that he has illuminated their minds to understand. that they may not only see something of the implications of divine providence in their life as they lay providence alongside Scripture, but that they may also have the heart gladly to embrace the will of God as that will is unfolded by God through their application of his teaching and Scripture to his providences in their lives. So as he indwells us, he indwells us in order to lead us and to guide us daily in the course of our Christian obedience. But second, as he indwells us, he is given to us in order that he may support us. Owen draws attention obviously to Paul's teaching in Romans chapter 8. But the Christian life is a life of infirmity. It is a life of weakness, not just a life of infirmities and weaknesses, but the whole life is one infirmity, one weakness. And the glory of the indwelling of the Spirit in the believer is that in the essential weakness of our lives, the Spirit supports us, the Spirit aids us, the Spirit comes and more picturesquely takes the heavy end of the burden, as Paul seems to be saying, and enables us to carry out those duties that without the help and ministry of the Spirit, we would find absolutely insupportable. And then the third way in which the Spirit ministers to us as He indwells us, says Owen, is by exercising the restraints of His presence on our lives. One of the things the Spirit does in men's lives, says Owen, is to drop a sense of awe on their spirits. He drops a sense of the awe or the fear of God on men's hearts and thus restrains them from running into the outcrop of their own sinful hearts and running into ruin. He restrains them by His presence and by the influence of the awe which His presence creates in the lives of His people. Here He uses what is I think one of his favorite character illustrations from scripture, the illustration of Simon Peter. Peter, he says, was broken loose and running downhill apace, denying and forswearing his master. But Christ restrained him. You sometimes need to read Owen slowly to see that actually his writings are full of illustration. But very often those illustrations are the picture illustrations of language rather than the illustrations of personal experience. Here is Peter broken loose and running downhill. Why? Because in dwelling sins, basic tendency is to break loose, to run downhill, and to deny Jesus Christ. But Christ restrains him. And just because The Holy Spirit supplies for the church in every age the absence of the bodily presence of Jesus Christ. Owen is able to say, and this is obviously precisely what the Spirit does in the believer now. He restrains us when by our sinful disposition we would break loose and run downhill. Just as through the bodily presence of Jesus, Peter remembered the word of the Lord, and wept bitterly, and was restored by his grace, so by the vicar of Christ, the Holy Spirit says, oh, and similarly, the believer remembers the word of the Lord, and weeps bitterly, and is restored by his grace. It's interesting to notice that here one senses in Owen, as is certainly true of the finest flower of Reformed theology, that the perseverance of the saints is never a matter of the Spirit regenerating the elect and then leaving them to the influences of that regeneration. Owen emphasizes over and over again in his monumental exposition of Perseverance in Volume 11. For perseverance there needs to be the continuing ministry of the indwelling spirit. We are so frail and fragile of ourselves if we only believed it and understood it from scripture we would see that we are daily on the verge of failure. Were it not for the fresh supplies of the Spirit of God who indwells the believer, there is not one of us who would be restrained from sin and indeed from apostasy. Now in the light of that, Owen tells us, as you would expect, that the believer has certain responsibilities. His chief responsibility, says Owen, is to distinguish between the directions of the spirit of grace and the delusions of the spirit of the world and of our own sinful hearts. And he sets up one of these great Puritan cases of conscience. How does the believer distinguish between the directions of the spirit of grace and the delusions of his own heart and the world? one of the most fundamental questions of all, obviously. And Owen says, if I may briefly summarize him, that there are four ways in which we do so. The first of them is this. We are able to distinguish the directions of the Spirit because the motions of the Spirit are regular. That is, quite literally, the motions of the Spirit are according to rule. namely the rule of God's Holy Word. And therefore all the motions that a believer experiences may be tried and tested by that rule. Says Owen, it is axiomatic for the Christian life that the Spirit is not present in the believer in order to provide him with a new rule, but to give him simply fresh light on the constant rule of God's word and new power in order to obey its injunctions. So one can always test the spirits as own in this sense by bringing them to the canon or the rule or the touchstone of the teaching of sacred scripture. But there are other ways in which we can distinguish his presence from the presence of a deluding spirit. We may distinguish his presence because, says Owen, the commands of the Spirit, that is, the directions in which he leads us by his pressures upon our lives, those commands of the Spirit are not grievous. What Owen means by that, as he expounds at large in Volume 3 of his writings, is that the direction in which the Spirit leads the believer in the way of his duty to God is a direction that will always be consistent with the new nature that the Spirit has created in the believer. Regeneration means, says Owen, the law of the Lord being written on the heart. And therefore, as the law of the Lord is worked out in the life, the commands of the Spirit, the directions in which the Spirit prompts the believer through the Word, will always be suited to the nature that the Spirit has given the believer. There is therefore not grief for the believer in his obedience, but joy and harmony for the believer as he obeys the directives of the Spirit. Thirdly, The Spirit's movements in our lives, His directions in our lives, are always orderly. Just as David says of the covenant that God has made with him, says Owen, that it is ordered in all things and secure. So one of the characteristic marks of the Spirit's operation in the life of the believer is that His operations will be orderly and not frenetic. He puts it like this in volume 11 and here again you can probably recognize the same kinds of people in your own congregations that Owen had in his congregation. We see some poor souls to be in such bondage as to be hurried up and down in the matter of duties at the pleasure of Satan. They must run from one to another and commonly neglect that which they should do. When they are at prayer, then they should be at the work of their calling. And when they are at their calling, they are tempted for not laying all aside and running to prayer. Believers know that this is not from the Spirit of God, which makes everything beautiful in its season. The production of the orderly life is one of the fruits, says Owen, of the leading and the indwelling of the Spirit. And then fourthly, Owen says, we recognize the direction of the indwelling Spirit, because all His directions tend to a good end by glorifying God according to His word. So the Spirit indwells us. And precisely because He indwells us personally, He is, says Owen, the earnest of our inheritance. the earnest of our inheritance, he says, is nothing else than the Spirit himself dwelling in our lives. And this inevitably is one of the keys of his understanding of what it means to be a Christian. And indeed one of the keys to his exposition of why the Spirit is the comforter. The reason Owen believes there is conflict and tension in the Christian life is because we have received the Spirit as the earnest of our inheritance. Contrary to the kind of thing that was said in his day and in ours, that if we only had more of the Spirit, then all the tensions and difficulties would begin to disappear from our lives, Owen argues that the really foundational and fundamental tensions and trials in the Christian life are not those which will be removed by the Spirit, but those which are actually caused because the Spirit is present with us. It's because the Spirit dwells in us that the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit wars against the flesh. Just because, as the earnest of our inheritance, he dwells in us and therefore sets up the tension that is characteristic exclusively of the Christian believer, he is also the comforter, because he is the earnest of the inheritance. And the very struggles and trials through which the Christian goes as a Christian believer, therefore, for Owen, are paradoxically also his comforts, because they are the fruit of one who is in him to assure him of the fullness of the inheritance that is to be his in the last day. So Owen emphasizes the indwelling of the Spirit. He emphasizes in the second place, and here we will need to be brief, that the Spirit is present in the believer in order to seal the believer. And in order, I think, to understand what Owen is about in his exposition of the sealing of the Holy Spirit, we need to remember that it was certainly true of many of his friends and those to whom he looked for guidance and direction theologically, that they held that the sealing of the Spirit was a distinct ministry of the Spirit, quite distinguishable from and frequently following the ministry of the Spirit in the work of regeneration. There is an interesting history to that view. Let me try and summarize it for you. When Calvin had written on the sealing of the Spirit, He had taught that the Spirit Himself was the seal, and he especially associated the seal of the Spirit with the internal confirmation to the believer that Scripture was the Word of God. His view had been shared by his successor, Theodore Beza, who spoke of believers as being sealed with the Spirit because the Spirit was the pledge of their election until the full inheritance was received. But when we move from the 16th into the 17th century discussions of the seal of the Spirit, one of the things we discover is this, that the presence of the Spirit and the ministry of the Spirit are in a sense divided. And the notion of the sealing of the Spirit is removed from the presence of the Spirit to the ministry of the Spirit. You find at least traces of that in William Perkins, who tells us that the seal of the Spirit is the evident assurance that the promise of life belongs to us. And you find that position taken, I think, even further in the teaching of Richard Sibbes when commenting on Ephesians 1.13, he argues rather explicitly that the seal of the Spirit is what he calls a super added work. It is a super added work. In John Cotton, both in Old England and in New England, you find him wrestling again with what the sealing of the Spirit might be and being unusually sensitive to the potential antinomian consequences of saying that the seal of the Spirit is simply assurance. And saying that although he recognizes there are good divines who understand it in that way, he himself would rather describe that as the witness of the Spirit than as the seal of the Spirit. But what Cotton felt reluctant to state, John Preston, one of his converts, stated without any hesitation. The seal of the Spirit, said Preston, is a second work of the Spirit given exclusively to those who overcome. Preston writes, you will say, what is the seal of the Spirit? My beloved, It is a thing that we cannot express. It is a certain divine expression of light, a certain unexpressible assurance that we are the sons of God, a certain secret manifestation that God has received us and put away our sins. I say it is such a thing that no man knows, but they that have it. Indeed, Preston is so impressed by this experience, which he describes as the sealing of the Spirit, that he says, if there were not a generation of men alive who had experienced this, nobody would believe that it was possible to experience it. And of course, that was more or less the view that was adopted and expounded by Owen's great colleague, Thomas Goodwin. particularly in his exposition of the epistle to the Ephesians. Now it's one of the more interesting sidelights on Owen's development of his doctrine of the Spirit that certainly through the latter part of his life he was struggling with the significance of this statement that we are sealed with the Spirit. In 1667 he writes, I am not very clear on the certain particular intendment of this metaphor. That's encouraging since by that time he was, I suppose, about 54 years old and still was not altogether sure what the seal of the Spirit was. But, he reasons, on this he is clear that what is sealed according to the teaching of Scripture is not promises, but persons. It is not the sealing of the promise to the believer that is being described in Scripture, but explicitly the believer who is sealed. And he concludes that we are sealed when we have a fresh sense of the love of God within us and a comfortable persuasion of our acceptance with God but further identification of the seal of the Spirit, in his fifties at least, he is not prepared to make. Now you see what he's wrestling with. He is wrestling with the fact that he and his fellow believers, especially those who were his dear friends and colleagues, knew a measure of assurance that was apparently extraordinary. And yet you notice his reluctance to follow along with his colleagues and to suggest that that measure of assurance they enjoy is to be identified with the seal of the Spirit. Now, whether accidentally or on purpose, it was ten years after Owen died that his final view on the sealing of the Spirit was given to the public. in 1693 when his work on the Holy Spirit as Comforter was posthumously published. And by this time we find that he has clear and self-conscious views of the sealing of the Spirit. He had recognized earlier on that it's not persons but promises which are sealed. But then he goes on to say this, it is no especial act He means by that a distinct act, but a special effect of his communication unto us. That is to say, the sealing of the Spirit is not an activity in which he engages, but rather it is an effect of his presence indwelling the believer. Again, he puts it like this. The effects of this sealing are gracious operations of the Holy Spirit in and upon believers, but the sealing itself is the communication of the Spirit unto them. And so he writes in conclusion, and this is a very striking and illuminating statement, it hath been generally conceived and there is no doubt who he means by saying it hath been generally conceived, that this sealing with the Spirit is that which gives assurance unto believers, and so indeed it doth, although the way whereby it doth hath not been rightly apprehended, and therefore none has been able to declare the especial nature of that act of the Spirit whereby he seals us when such assurance should ensue. You would almost think that he'd been reading Preston there. But it is indeed not any act of the Spirit in us that is the ground of our assurance, but the communication of the Spirit unto us. The seal, in other words, is not the action of the Spirit bringing us assurance, but the presence of the Spirit indwelling us, says Owen, as one of the grounds of our assurance. And in that sense, he wants to argue, every believer is sealed with the Holy Spirit. Now, of course, Owen is not denying in saying that, that we may have specially blessed influences of the Holy Spirit. He has this marvelous picture in volume 2 where he describes the believer like a man coming into court pleading his cause and discovering there are all kinds of prosecution witnesses against him. There are all kinds of reasons why his plea that he is a true Christian should be disregarded. But he says The work of the Spirit as he testifies to us that we are the children of God is as though some person whose testimony was beyond reproach came into the court on our behalf and when he spoke on the matter, the case against us was totally dismissed. So it's possible to know, says Owen, by the ministry of the Word, by the ministry of the Spirit, by the gracious operations of God, what it means for the Spirit to bear witness with our spirits that we are indeed the children of God. But that, he says, is not to be categorized as the testimony of the Spirit as the seal. The seal is the Spirit Himself. And the reason, interestingly, he argues like that, is because he adopts as his fundamental hermeneutical principle that since the Spirit we receive is the Spirit who was on the Lord Jesus Christ, since Scripture speaks about Jesus being sealed by the Father, the sealing of the believer will be parallel to the sealing of Jesus the Son, and the sealing of Jesus as Son was not a sealing that took place by distinctive acts and operations of the Spirit in his life, but by the pouring out of the Spirit upon his life and the gift of the Spirit to him. What then, may we say in conclusion, are the responsibilities that the believer has as he receives the indwelling Spirit and the Spirit as seal. While Owen says there are three, the first of them is this, and we regarded it yesterday. That because the Spirit who indwells us is Himself divine, He is to be worshipped. Second, with respect to His influence in our lives, He is not to be quenched, but to be obeyed. And thirdly and especially with respect to his personal indwelling as God's seal of our lives, says Owen, he is not to be grieved. To grieve someone, says Owen, is to show them the unkindness of unrequited love. It is the defect of an answerable love unto the fruits and testimonies of His love which we have received. He comes, says Owen, seeking fruit. And if in our unrequited love we grieve Him and fail Him, then, says Owen, we discover that we have not only quenched the Spirit, but grieve the One who loves us. He comes seeking grace, and when He finds wild grace, He is grieved. And should we, says Owen, who have received such signal mercies from the indwelling Spirit, grieve Him who has loved us. And this is heightened and pointed for Owen, precisely because of the intimacy between the Spirit and the believer. Those who are most grieved by us, he says, are those who are most intimate to us. And there is none more intimate to us than the Spirit who was intimate with Jesus. Therefore, there is no greater crime for the believer than to grieve Him who has come to make us holy, to grieve Him who has come to comfort us, to grieve Him who has loved us with the everlasting love of God. Since then, he says, we have been sealed by the Spirit, with the Spirit, for the day of redemption. Let us live lives that rather than grieve Him, submit to Him, and bring our Lord Jesus Christ through the ministry of the Spirit, the praise and honor that He deserves. Let us pray. O our Heavenly Father, when we contemplate the power and the majesty of the writings of a mere man and recognize that we have here but a glimpse at the edges of your ways. We bow in humility and awe and ask that more and more you will teach us out of your most sacred word what it means to be men who are indwelt by all the fullness of God. Oh, our Father, we confess our gross unbelief of what you have told us in your Word. And we confess at what low levels we have lived because we have limped so many days doubting, unbelieving, the sheer majesty and power of what you have done for us and given to us in Jesus Christ. We have not thought what Spirit dwells within us. We pray that in these days more and more as we see our need for Him and as we see His glorious testimony to our Lord Jesus and his operations within us as the spirit of adoption, enabling us in our darkest hours to cry out, Abba, our Father. We pray that learning to love him and appreciating all that he has done for us, we will live henceforth as those who please him. and not as those who grieve him. We ask, gracious God, that in the rest of this day you will pour out your Spirit upon us, that we may be conscious of that restraining awe in your presence that preserves us and protects us from sin. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I'm just sorry that Sinclair had to go, very sorry indeed. But I personally thought that one of the most helpful things that he said, of the many, many things that I found very helpful, was his emphasis on the mystery of the Spirit's work. We do not know how the Spirit of God worked in the incarnation of Christ in the virgin birth. We do not know the manner of His indwelling in the believer. And it does seem to me that it is in those areas where we do not have definitive scriptural statement, that it's in those areas that there's a real potential for needless division and controversy between believers. And it's my general reading of the present situation that there has been a great revival of the truth in many, many parts of the earth. and the word is being preached as it has not been preached I think for many years. And suddenly in the midst of this encouragement we find a number of controversies springing up between men who are essentially preaching the same things. And it seems to me that this is far too much like what has happened in history before. for us to suppose it's purely accidental. I think we do face at the moment some sort of real counter-attack that is of spiritual origin and that it behoves us as pastors and ministers to be exceedingly cautious with regard to controversies that may seem to us to be very important. But it is a passed out of the devil to distract preachers of the Gospel into controversies that will take us off what is the main need of the moment. And the main need of the moment, as we all know, is simply a restoration of the central doctrines of the Christian faith, the doctrines of rebirth and justification, God's redeeming grace and power, and so on. So it's in that light that I tend to view the controversy between some reformed men On the work of the Holy Spirit and what Ferguson has been speaking of more this morning, it's very similar to the point that he brought out so helpfully of the difference between Perkins and Cotton and Preston and the some of the more mature judgments of John Owen, they were differences within a common Puritan tradition. They were not differences which warranted men to stand in opposition or hostility to one another. And I think that is the same today. And in Britain, for example, some people have started to call those who say, for example, Hal Preston's view reformed sealers. And I think as soon as we start giving labels, we are immediately in danger of running into parties. I do believe that the controversy between reformed men in Britain is related to the fact that both sides are anxious to preserve what are fundamental biblical truths. On the one hand, the truth that the Holy Spirit indwells all believers, that if we are regenerate, we are possessed of the Spirit of God. And that the Holy Spirit, as Christ promised in John 14, shall be with you forever. That we are in the age of the Spirit, that we are not living in times when the Spirit comes and goes. So those are great biblical truths, and they're truths which some men, indeed all of us, all of us should be very concerned to emphasize. But then on the other side, There are those who, among whom Dr. Lloyd-Jones is a great leader, who were at pains to emphasize that it is possible to be a Christian and live with a very low sense of that awe that Sinclair was talking about, with a low sense of assurance. How often amongst Christians we hear people talking as though death were a terrible calamity and one of our members has only been given six months to live and maybe the whole church views it as a terrible calamity. Well I know in a natural sense we do mourn over death but it seems to me that generally there's a very low sense of assurance and then the whole concept of revival Is a revival simply coming to believe something that's always been true? That is to say that we are presently filled with the Holy Spirit. The only trouble is we don't know it. Now of course Dr. Lloyd-Jones was concerned to say that that is not the case. It's not simply a question that we are all now filled with the Holy Spirit if only we would recognize it. He would say well that's not what we find in Acts 4 and so on. So he was concerned, without negating those other truths, to bring in that further dimension that there are manifestations of the Spirit of God which are sorely needed by the Church at the present time. And he particularly focused attention on the Holy Spirit's work in assurance, and it was his understanding that the weakness of our preaching and our praying and the weakness of our church life is very much related to low standards of assurance. We do not have the anticipation of glory sufficiently brightly upon us. Well, those two things, both those truths are surely well contained together. They're both New Testament truths. If a person is a Christian, he is indwelt by the Spirit of God. But even the Apostle Paul in Philippians 1 speaks of the need of the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And mysterious though it is, I think there is no question myself, personally, that the manifestations of the Spirit may be very greatly restrained and sometimes restrained over considerable periods of time from the Church. Now how we set that out exegetically is probably the area of debate and difficulty. Some men say that this text means precisely that and it means no more than that. Some men say that the only baptism of the Spirit is what we read in 1 Corinthians 12 and there is no other baptizing work of the Spirit at all. Others say you're misunderstanding the word baptism and there is another sense in which large plenitudes of the Spirit are given. So I think in those areas of exegesis we need to move, as I'm sure all the speakers are emphasizing, with much caution and with understanding of each other's concerns. Within all this controversy of course in Britain, and I mustn't exaggerate, it's not a great controversy, but what makes the controversy serious of course is the charismatic movement. And perhaps the first question people ask is where does Sun Tzu stand in relation to the charismatic movement? And maybe that shouldn't be the first question we ask because if we make that the first question we are really reacting to something else instead of actually leading ourselves with what ought to be the major truths. And of course, Dr. Lloyd-Jones's view, Dr. Lloyd-Jones's sense of history was such that he knew that true revivals sometimes began amongst people who had very low understanding, except with very few truths. Now that was the case in the 18th century when Whitfield began to preach and Wesley and others, their actual theological perception was quite low. It was true in Dr. Lloyd-Jones' own ministry in the first few years of his ministry. So when we therefore see young Christians who have much enthusiasm, it may not be possible to tell initially whether this perhaps is another great movement of the Spirit beginning And we should not rush to condemn people just because their understanding is small. So Dr. Lloyd-Jones's attitude to the charismatic movement was to handle it with great gentleness and to give all the help he could to increase the understanding of men who were enthusiastic about it. As time went on of course he saw quite clearly that what the charismatic movement in general was doing was not something biblical at all. It was diminishing the importance of the truth of Christian doctrine which is fundamental to everything. And he said that and all that is available and it's a great and extraordinary distortion of his teaching to suppose that Dr. Lloyd-Jones was a supporter of the charismatic movement. It's a complete misunderstanding and I think that again that that has occurred. You will think that I'm speaking too much of the powers of darkness, but it does seem to me that if you can identify anyone with the charismatic movement, there's no question that given a certain number of years, that person is going to be discredited, because the charismatic movement will not last. It will run on for a certain period, and it will collapse. And when it does collapse, those who were its leaders will not stand on the pages of church history as men of discernment and leadership. And therefore, if you can identify Dr. Lloyd-Jones with that, come a few years, it will be the hope of the devil that Dr. Lloyd-Jones' books will be shut up and people won't study him. So I think the thing is quite subtle. Now, I'm really saying far too much. Where is Mr. Chantry? I'm not about to speak, I was about to take questions. Yes, well this is, you see, where we get into areas of controversy. I mean, we all speak English of different kinds. We have a richness of vocabulary, and Sinclair was using it, which enables us to make fine distinctions. And these distinctions can be important. But sometimes, you know, major controversies can just hang on one word in English. And the difference between immediate and immediate is one of those points. When Dr. Lloyd-Jones used the word immediate, he meant that in assurance we do not simply examine ourselves and in the light of Scripture draw certain conclusions. We love the brethren, therefore we are the children of God. But he would call that immediate assurance, that is comes to us through the media of the written word that we self-consciously judge and apply. He would say, like the quotation you heard from Preston, that sometimes the Holy Spirit works so directly that it's immediate, that it's not our reasoning from Scripture, but immediately, as sometimes a light surprises a Christian as he sings. Maybe that is a helpful distinction, but if you build a theological position on it as the antinomians did, then you're in great trouble. The antinomians of the 17th century and later built their whole theology of assurance on the idea of immediate and therefore they looked upon it as a rather carnal thing to be looking for marks of grace. We don't need any marks of grace, we don't need to say do we love the brethren, we don't need to examine ourselves because the spirit witnesses immediately to us. Well once you start saying that you are already a long way from the New Testament. So, I think we need to be careful about the use of immediate and immediate, but I do think there is a sense in which it is justified to speak of immediate if we are careful. But it isn't a scriptural distinction and therefore it's certainly not something to be made a battleground. What do you say Mr. Chancellor? What do I say? Obviously, there is an immediate operation of the Holy Spirit within the believer. And if that's what you're referring to, you can use the term. But if you're using immediate to indicate that there is some objective revelation that has come to you without any means, then you want to avoid that. Say, no, I don't believe in the immediate witness of the Spirit. There certainly are evidences of the immediate presence of the Spirit with the believer. Do you want to pursue that? Yeah, I came to see the difference between the sense of atmosphere and the mood of the atmosphere and the mediation of it in the day. The question is, which one of those do you think is the most prominent? Which is? You're asking me for all of the Puritans? What's that? Well, I think the sun and the moon distinction was an illustration. And I think everyone who struggles with the scriptural view of assurance will admit that there are varying degrees of assurance. And it would certainly be, I'm sure that what they're saying is that the immediate rays of the sun would illustrate a stronger assurance than the reflection of the moon and a mere logical exercise of the mind when there comes that immediate witness of the spirit with our spirit. There was someone else who wanted to pursue something here. Yes. To what extent is the doctrine of being convinced in the charismatic movement today? Oh, well, that's right, he is. That's a very good point. I mean, if a charismatic can find a sentence in his books or something that bears any resemblance to what they're saying, it would be extracted and put on the cover. That is so. And even the way charismatics talk about him as an apostle and prophet, you know, that is very misleading too. He would have been aghast to have heard that sort of title given to him. Could I just say a brief word on the point? I think that we distinguish these types of assurance. When we first are converted, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. Well, there's a promise of God and when we receive the promise, We have a type of assurance and a believer has assurance in resting on the promises of God without anything else. We don't say before you can have any assurance you've got to read your own heart and make sure you love the brethren and you keep the commandments of God. Now some Christian groups have said that and that leads to great trouble. There is an assurance that may be given to the believer at once on his conversion and it's based on the promises of God. That doesn't mean, however, in the second place that we neglect the assurance that comes from the evidence of Christian holiness. That must be handled carefully. but very clearly from 1 John and other parts of scripture, it's an important part of assurance. And then, as others would distinguish, a third kind of assurance which is more immediate and direct, when the Holy Spirit comforts us, maybe when we're at low ebb, maybe when we see no signs of grace in us at all. Sometimes even C.H. Virgin was brought virtually to a condition of despair And in those dark hours, it may not be that we have any ability to distinguish grace, but the Spirit shines upon us and comforts us. Now I think the important thing to say is that all those three forms of assurance need to be twined together, and the danger comes when people isolate one and say that this is the assurance of the New Testament. I think they all overlap, and that we need to teach all three, and that Personally, I think it's dangerous to say that any one of them is the assurance of the New Testament. I think they fit together. I think your suggestions were very helpful. Thank you, and we do want to end because our next session will begin in five moments. Let me just mention that one of the aspects of this whole discussion that is frustrating If you hear Dr. Lloyd-Jones believe this or believe that, and you go and read all of the books that he read, and then somebody said, but I heard him say, in person. Well, that's, you know, if in years to come, you've read all of the works of John Murray, and then someone wants to say, but I heard him say in person, and therefore he believes something contrary to everything he's put in print. That's tragic, and that's a tragic part of the whole controversy right now. There's no question when you read Dr. Roy Jones' books that he was not promoting a charismatic view. Well, thank you. This lecture, A Message, is made available to you by the Banner of Truth Trust in America and in Edinburgh, Scotland, in cooperation with the Trinity Pulpit in Essexville, New Jersey. These conferences are held each year in America, And information regarding future conferences may be obtained by writing to the office of the Banner of Truth Trust in America at the following address, Banner of Truth Trust, Post Office Box 621, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 17013. Also, a list of the reprinted works of great theologians and many outstanding scholars of today may be sent to you on request. by writing to the Banner of Truth Trust. Now let Ernie Resinger, pastor of the Pompano Beach Baptist Church in Pompano Beach, Florida, tell you something of these conferences. This is our sixth Ministers and Elders Conference in the United States. However, in England, the Banner of Truth has had this type of conference for over 25 years. I think my first conference was 1962. I believe that would be about 22 years ago. To my knowledge, they have all been used in a great measure, used of God to instruct, and at times to search us, and always to encourage those in the ministry. And I pray that this will be no exception. I have every reason to believe that the men attending such a conference are here not looking for frothy religious excitement, but rather biblical and experimental substance. Of course, that can only be received from the Bible. Men who desire I believe the men who come to these conferences are men who desire to be instructed and desire to be searched, like David. Men who desire to be used. And certainly, as already has been indicated, we all come because we need encouragement. And age doesn't change those things. You'll still need it when you're older, those three things. We have a hymn in our hymnal back in our churches. It's, the name of the hymn is, Brother and We Are Met to Worship. And one of the lines, I think the line is, Brother and We Are Met to Worship and Adore the God We Love. But there's a line that says this, All is vain, except all is vain on them that spirit of the Holy One come down. And it doesn't matter about the conference or the speakers, for our spiritual good, that same thing is true here, unless the Spirit of the Holy One come down. And I pray that that would be our portion this week.