The Path of Sorrow

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

…but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. – John 15:19

No doubt the sufferings of the Church, and the fact that she has to pass through the fire, must be ascribed to the great truth that thus her God is glorified. Brethren, you and I do not glorify God much; for we have very little to suffer. The blood red crown of martyrdom is such an object of ambition, or it should be, to the believer that he might almost regret that it is not in his power to coin it. We! what do we suffer? Somebody slanders our character. What is that? Somebody abuses us in the newspaper, what is that? We are accused of one crime and another. What can it signify to a man who knows his conscience is right in the sight of God? What does he care if all the babbling tongues of all the liars in earth and hell should be let loose against him; he can bear all that and endure it quietly. It is nothing. When I read the stories of the Book of Martyrs, and note how our great reformers fought for Christ, and manfully won the victory, I blush for ourselves. Why, brethren, we live in such silken times that glory is scarce possible to us. We have much to do, but we have nothing to suffer. We cannot prove our love to Christ as they did. They indeed were a highly honored people who were permitted to glorify Christ even in the very fires. Look at it in this light, and the light afflictions you have to endure, will seem to be as nothing at all, when you think of the weight of glory which they shall bring to your Lord and to yourself. But as history confirms the statement that the Church of Christ must walk through the fire, so does the history of each individual Christian teach him that he must walk through the fire too.

“The path of sorrow and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”

Through much tribulation we must inherit the kingdom. Think it no strange thing when the fiery trial shall happen to you.

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

The Lost Silver Piece

Sherry sermon 1 Comment

You who are King of kings and Lord of lords, we worship You. Before Jehovah’s awful throne we bow with sacred joy.

Sermon Text

Our Faithful Testimony

Sherry Christian Life, salvation, Character of Jesus, Attributes of God, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. – John 15:19

True Christians are aliens, foreigners, men that speak another speech, men who are actuated by different motives, men who live for different ends, who are governed by different maxima from the rest of the men of this world, therefore it is that their pathway must be one of trial and opposition. All things the Christian teaches are so dead against the pleasures of the worldling and his gain, that it is no wonder he opposes us. Men hate the gospel because the gospel does not like them. That church is never true to her Christ, nor true to herself which does not draw upon herself the hatred of ungodly men, by a faithful testimony against their sins.

It hath fared well with the Church when she hath been persecuted, and her pathway hath been through fire. Her feet are shod with iron and brass. She ought not to tread on paths strewed with flowers; it is her proper place to suffer. Christ redeemed the world with agonies, and the Church must teach the world by the example of her anguish. First of all, the blood of Christ was shed meritoriously, and afterwards the blood of His Church is shed testimonially, to win the world by suffering…There is no loss in the army of Christ when the best preachers fall, and the mightiest evangelists are put to death. They are not lost; the blood is well shed and gloriously well spent. It is buying victory. It is procuring crowns for Jesus Christ. 

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

In the Enemy’s Country

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. – Isaiah 43:2

The pure Church of Christ has always been the victim of persecution, and though she has persecuted never, but has always maintained inviolate, disunion from the state, and an utter hatred of all laws which would bind the conscience of man, yet has she been especially destitute, afflicted, tormented, and if she hath today a little breathing time, perhaps it is rather owing to the timidity which has made us keep back our sentiments, than to any charity towards ourselves. Find the Church of Christ wherever you will, and you shall find her scorned and despised of man.

“If you want to find the drunkards and sinners of the worst dye,” said one of our preachers at or before Cromwell’s time, “you can find them in Church and state, but if you wish to find the men who are holy and who serve God, you must look into the felon’s dungeons for them, for that is where they have been cast by the powers that be.” Everywhere from the first day until now, it is not respectable to be a follower of Christ. If we follow Christ fully and faithfully before God, it is not equitable and praiseworthy before men. To take up His cross and to perform the ceremonies which He ordains, man hates. To adhere to truths which never were and never can be palatable to the carnal mind of man, is, and ever has been, to excite animosity. The pathway of the Church, then, has been one of fire and flame. As it has been so with the Church, we may suspect there is some reason for it, and that reason has to be found in the great fact that the Church is in an enemy’s country. She is not among her friends; she is a pilgrim and a stranger upon the earth. 

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

The Persecuted Church

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 5 Comments

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. – Isaiah 43:2

When first there was a Church of God on earth, in the person of Abel it was persecuted, Cain lifted up his cruel club to slay his brother; and when the children of Seth were the representatives of God’s chosen, they were without doubt the subject of the jeer and gibe of the descendants of Cain. Noah, the preacher of righteousness endured during his one hundred and twenty years, the hardness of heart and carelessness of an unthinking world; he and his family, who were the remnant of the Church in the latter part of those days, were constantly exposed to the laughter and persecution of men…From that day forward, whether you read through the life of Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, it still standeth true, “He that is born after the flesh persecuteth him that is born after the Spirit.”

Find me the abode of the Church of God and I can smell the furnace not far off. Show me the follower of the God of Abraham and I shall soon find the host of enemies ready for the attack. Up till the days of the Saviour the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, not only from its friends who would take it, but from those enemies who would assault it. From the blood of Abel down to the blood of Zecharias the son of Barachias, the pathway of the Church hath been a blood-besprinkled time. Since that day, what tongue can tell the sufferings of the people of God? Since Christ became martyr as well as Redeemer, has there been a season in which God’s people have not somewhere or other been made to feel that they are not of the world, and that the world does not love them because they are not of the world? Through much tribulation the people of God must wade their way to Canaan.

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

 

Tribulations, Temptations and Afflictions

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. – Isaiah 43:2

It may be well for us to remark that we are not sufficiently grateful, I fear, for the preservation which God affords to us from fire…The walking through the fire here is put for the severest form of trouble: You have, in the commencement of the verse, trouble described as passing through the water. This represents the overwhelming influence of trial in which the soul is sometimes so covered that it becomes like a man sinking in the waves. “When thou goest through the rivers”—those mountain torrents which with terrific force are often sufficient to carry a man away. This expresses the force of trouble, the power with which it sometimes lifts a man from the foothold of his stability and carries him before it. “When thou passest through the rivers they shall not overflow thee.” But going through the fire expresses not so much the overwhelming character and the upsetting power of trouble as the actual consuming and destructive power of trouble and temptation. The metaphor is more vivid, more terrific, than that which is employed in the first sentence, and yet vivid and awful though it be, it is certainly not too strong a figure to be used as the emblem of the tribulations, temptations and afflictions, through which the Church and people of God have been called to pass. We may apprise the richness of the promise in proportion to the astonishing character of the metaphor, and we ought to value the privilege which it confers in the precise ratio of the dreadful character of the danger against which it preserves us. “When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”

Fire! Fire! Fire! by C. H. Spurgeon

None Shall Resist His Will

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel? – Jeremiah 15:12

And (Saul) said, “Who are You, Lord?” Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” – Acts 9:5

To resist God is to strike with naked feet against a goad. “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” You will hurt yourself; you cannot injure Him, nor change His purposes by so much as the turning of a hair. God will have His way: None shall resist His will. Everlasting and eternal are His decrees; and fast and fixed they ever must remain, though all earth and hell should unite in one great conspiracy. He thrusts a bit into the tempest’s mouth, and rides upon the wings of the wind. Confusion there is none to Him. Adversaries, what are they? They are utterly consumed as the stubble. But take ye heed that God come not out against you, ye who are rebels; for if He once put on the war-harness and fight against you, woe unto you! Have you not heard? Hath no one told you of the arrows of His quiver? They are sharp, heart-piercing, infallible. Sickness can shake you till every nerve shall become a road for pain to carry on its dreadful traffic. Poverty can come upon you, and want, like an armed man. Death shall strike down all your lovers, and your acquaintances shall sink into the abyss. Let God but come forth in judgment against a man, or a people, and what can He not do?

Cast down your weapons. Come now and ask for reconciliation. The ambassador of peace invites you. I point you no longer to His burning throne, but to yonder cross. See there God in human flesh—bleeding, suffering, dying. Those wounds are fountains of mercy. Look to them, and you shall live. Wrath is appeased by the death of Jesus. Fury is no more in Jehovah! Trust in Jesus, the crucified, and your transgression shall be forgiven you. That precious blood shall make reconciliation: there shall be peace between you and God; but O resist no longer, for the iron cannot break the northern iron and the steel.

The Northern Iron and the Steel by C. H. Spurgeon