III. A plain warning as to the possibility of thwarting these
influences.
Nothing here about irresistible grace; nothing here about a power that
lays hold upon a man, and makes him good, he lying passive in its hands
like clay in the hands of the potter! You will not be made holy without
the Divine Spirit, but you will not be made holy without your working
along with it. There is a possibility of resisting, and there is a
possibility of co-operating. Man is left free. God does not lay hold of
any one by the hair of his head, and drag him into paths of
righteousness whether he will or no. But whilst there is the necessity
for co-operation, which involves the possibility of resistance, we must
also remember that that new life which comes into a man, and moulds his
will as well as the rest of his nature, is itself the gift of God. We do
not get into a contradiction when we thus speak, we only touch the edge
of a great ocean in which our plummets can find no bottom. The same
unravellable knot as to the co-operation of the divine and the creatural
is found in the natural world, as in the experiences of the Christian
soul. You have to work, and your work largely consists in yielding
yourselves to the work of God upon you. 'Work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you.' Brethren!
If you and I are Christian people, we have put into our hearts and
spirits the talent. It depends on us whether we wrap it in a napkin, and
stow it away underground somewhere, or whether we use it, and fructify
and increase it. If you wrap it in a napkin and put it away underground,
when you come to take it out, and want to say, 'Lo! there Thou hast that
is Thine,' you will find that it was not solid gold, which could not
rust or diminish, but that it has been like some volatile essence, put
away in an unventilated place, and imperfectly secured: the napkin is
there, but the talent has vanished. We have to work with God, and we can
resist. Ay, and there is a deeper and a sadder word than that applied by
the same Apostle in another letter to the same subject. We can 'quench'
the light and extinguish the fire.
What extinguishes it? Look at the catalogue of sins that lie side by
side with this exhortation of my text! They are all small
matters--bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil-speaking, malice,
stealing, lying, and the like; very 'homely' transgressions, if I may so
say. Yes, and if you pile enough of them upon the spark that is in your
hearts you will smother it out. Sin, the wrenching of myself away from
the influences, not attending to the whispers and suggestions, being
blind to the teaching of the Spirit through the Word and through
Providence: these are the things that 'grieve the Holy Spirit of God.'