Isaiah 59:21—My Spirit... and my words... shall not depart.
This is a very precious promise, especially to God’s ministers and to all who are using their voice and lips in his holy service. These may claim its fulfillment up to the hilt; and it is no doubt due to some pious ancestor having claimed these words that there is so often a godly succession of ministers in one family bearing the same honored name.
But these words are often quoted promiscuously and carelessly. Notice there are two traits of character distinctly noted and specified.
We must receive the Holy Spirit, and we must utter the words which He puts into our lips. They are one, because when the Holy Spirit fills the soul the lips are touched as with a live coal from off the altar. "They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak." Oh, bend your head low beneath the anointing of the great High Priest. Let Him breathe on you, and say, Receive the Holy Spirit; and then go out to be a witness for Him. Thou shalt be taught in the same hour what and how.
It is a marvelous thing that God should enter into covenant with man to keep on blessing his seed for his Word’s sake. Yet He does so. He keeps his blessings for thousands of them that love Him and keep his commandments, He punishes only to the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him. Long after you have gone, if only you have earnestly done God’s work in the world, He will be gracious to your children and your children’s children. Not only, as the poet said, "in a dead man’s face" comes out the likeness to one of his ancestors, but in the faces and lives of living men we may trace the influence of their godly forefathers.