Openly Shaming Satan

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

Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ… – Ephesians 3:8

(One) reason why the Lord takes the vilest of men to make them the saintliest is, that He might openly triumph over Satan. How the devil must feel defeated when such a man as Saul is taken straight away from persecuting to preaching! Surely, it makes Satan bite his chains and gnash his teeth when he loses his servants so. Just when he has trained them up, and got them into fine condition for doing mischief, in comes the officer of divine grace, arrests them, and changes their hearts. You know none ever do the devil so much mischief as those who once did him service…All heaven rings with rapture when a great sinner is saved; and all hell howls with dismay when one of the arch host bows down to kiss the feet of Christ and receive the mercy of God. Glory be to God when He takes those that would have been deepest damned and sets them highest among the saved on earth to be priests and Levites unto Him. By these means also He secures another end: He encourages poor penitents; for when a sinner, under a sense of sin, meets with a brother in Christ, who was like himself once, but is now living near to God and serving Him acceptably, he is much encouraged. “Why,” he thinks to himself, “is this how God receives sinners when they turn to Him? Perhaps He will receive me.” And if he gets into conversation with one of those whom God has made priests and Levites, he says, “Tell me what the Lord has done for thy soul.” And the minister being a man of like passions, and having had like experience, delights to describe the works and ways of God with hardened sinners and old offenders and then the man who is seeking finds in the other a guide who is touched with the feeling of his infirmity, is very helpful to him, and much blessed of God to enter into the secrets of his heart and lead him to the cross. If there be here some great rebel against God, I think he ought to take encouragement thence to turn unto the Lord and live, for surely, when God so treats His most defiant enemies as to make them His most honored ministers, there should be some comfort for the great sinner to seek the Lord while yet He waits to be gracious. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

The Power of God’s Love

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

I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.- Romans 9:15

Men who are tamers of wild beasts, will frequently, when they have subdued a lion, take a delight in showing to the people how obedient that lion will be to them, and how every word that the lion-tamer chooses to say, it will regard and pay attention to. Thus, when the Lord takes a great sinner, after He has tamed him, removed his heart of stone, and given him a heart of flesh, He desires to show how, without the use of the whip, without a threatening look or an angry word, He causes His enemy to become His diligent servant, His earnest friend. O brethren, it shows the power of love on a man when he is so broken down that the things he sneered at he now preaches with all his might. Surely it showed the power of divine grace when Paul avowed Christ openly and vehemently preached—exposing himself to persecution and death—that same gospel which his soul had previously nauseated; yea, which his zeal, full of bitterness, had kindled to exterminate. God takes great sinners and then appoints and qualifies them to be priests and Levites, in order that He might show the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe.

Divine grace, while it comes freely to us, is dispensed freely by God, according to the good pleasure of His will. I should like to hear that text thundered throughout Christendom: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” No man hath any right to the mercy of God. We have all sinned ourselves into outlaw: all the rights we have are the right to be condemned, and the right to be cast into hell; all the rights of man that he can appeal to God for in equity are merged in the wrongs for which he is responsible. If the Lord have mercy, it is His own will to do it: He can withhold it if it pleases Him; so He selects the most degraded, those that have gone farthest from Him, and takes them into His church…He lifteth up the poor from the dunghill, and setteth him among princes, even among the princes of His people. His mercy, power, and sovereignty are displayed when He takes of them to be priests and Levites. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

Oh, what deep mercy there is in Jesus!

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

Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ… – Ephesians 3:8

It is a great grace to be permitted to preach the gospel. I have sometimes said to you that when the prodigal came back to his father, and was received into his father’s house, no earthly parent, though he had quite forgiven him all the wildness of his son’s adventure, could wholly forget the waywardness of his disposition. He might condone the past without confiding in him for the future. If it were needful to send one of the sons to market with a bag of money, the good old father would, in all probability, say to himself, “I will send the elder son with it: he is better to be trusted; I would hardly like to put such a responsibility upon the young lad who has so lately been reclaimed.” I can fancy, without uttering a word to his younger son he would, discreetly (as you would say), trust the other with any weighty concerns. But our heavenly Father—oh, how He forgives us! He leaves no back reckonings, for though we used to be such sinners, some of us, and so injurious, after He forgave us, He committed to our charge not merely silver and gold, the perishable resources of time, but the priceless treasure of the gospel of Jesus Christ: He allowed us to go and tell to others “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” See ye not the impure giving, lessons on chastity, the intemperate teaching chastity? and mark ye not how he who persecuted the disciples in times past, now preacheth the faith he once destroyed? Oh, what deep mercy there is in Jesus! What wonderful grace there is in giving His commissions, that those that cursed Him themselves should intercede with Him for others; that those that despised Him should be permitted to honor Him; that those who broke His Sabbaths should nevertheless be helpful to His people in hallowing the Lord’s-day; that those who despised His word, and put it behind their back, should be the men to open it, and display the sweetness of it to their fellow men! Is not this grace? Methinks every time Paul preached Jesus Christ, he would say to himself: “I used to call Him the Nazarene; I abhorred Him and used opprobrious language, but herein is great mercy, boundless mercy, that He should take me to be His servant, to permit me to labor for His people and suffer for His sake.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

God Chooses the Least Likely from Among Men

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

And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. – Isaiah 66:21

“I will also take of them,” the most unlikely and unfit, according to human judgment. “I will also take of them for priests and for Levites unto Me.” And where the service has not taken the form of preaching, we can remember some whom God hath made eminent in prayer. Never account prayer second to preaching. No doubt prayer in the Christian church is as precious as the utterance of the gospel. To speak to God for men is a part of the Christian priesthood that should never be despised. Surely, I have heard some prayers of those whom none would ever have expected to pray, such as I have not heard from those who, from their youth up, have been accustomed to the language of devotion—moved with energy and full of fervor, like Elijah. Or, shall I say it, they have become in spiritual force nerved as Samson was with physical strength. In their prayers they have seemed to take hold of the pillars of the temple of Satan and pull it down upon their enemies; they have been so mighty as to wrestle with God and prevail. God has taken of them—that is, even of the prayerless, and the careless, and the blaspheming—and He has made these to be priests and Levites unto Him. And in all other holy service I think I can recollect eminent men who out of weakness were made strong, from simpletons they were changed into sages, or, rescued from the dregs of infamy, they became paragons of virtue. In their unregeneracy as bitter fruit, apples of Sodom, that crumbled into dust and turned to ashes, yet so transformed by the renewing of their minds, that they bore the richest clusters of choicest fruit to the praise and glory of the Great Husbandman. “I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord.” There is the fact. You need not that I enlarge upon it. While a false priesthood still lives (and always will), God has His elect people, who are His royal priesthood among the sons of men, who are discharging regal functions and sacred offices among the sons of men in His name, and before His face; and these He oftentimes takes out from the least likely of mankind. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

He Makes Us Fit for Service

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

And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. – Isaiah 66:21

Observe, according to the text, men have nothing to do with the selection; for here it is said, “I will also take of them”—not “their parents shall bring them up to it;” not “those who shall be looked out as the most fit and proper men on account of some natural bent and bias, or gift and talent, but I will take.” God’s priesthood in the world is a priesthood of His own choosing, of His own setting apart, of His own anointing. “He hath made us kings and priests unto God.” The church is a royal priesthood, not of man, neither by man, nor of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of birth: it is of God’s choosing. This sacred and consecrated band of priests and Levites, and all that serve God effectually and acceptably, are men whom He has Himself chosen to the work. He Himself hath done it, and only His own will has been consulted in the matter. In their case, it appears from the text, that whatever was unfit in their character has been overcome by divine grace. “I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord.” If God takes them for Levites, He makes them Levites; if He chooses them for priests, He makes them priests. So, glory be to His name, when He chose you, my dear brother, when He chose you, my dear sister, to be His servants, to be His priests and His Levites, He gave you the grace you wanted. He found in you no natural fitness, no suitability, but in fitness for sin, a suitability to go astray, and to become a brand for the burning; but if there be a fitness in you to serve Him on earth and in heaven, it is His grace that has done it. It is His grace speaking in all its wondrous majesty—”I will take of them for priests and for Levites”—which has effected in you the great transformation, making in you all things new, and thus qualifying you to become the servants of the Most High. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm

Alpha and Omega

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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

Made to be Honored and Faithful Servants

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

And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the LORD. – Isaiah 66:21

Priests and Levites had two works to do: something to do towards God for men, and something to do towards men for God. They were engaged to do something towards God for men, and so they offered the sacrifices that were brought to the door of the tabernacle, whether according to the general ordinances, or to any special vows. Spiritually minded, they were much engaged in intercession for the rest of Israel. So there is a people to be found this day who offer unto God acceptable prayer and praise, and in answer to their prayer, unnumbered blessings come down upon the sons of men. I trust there are some here that have power with God in prayer. Ye are the king’s remembrancers; ye make mention of His name and keep not silence; ye cry to God for Sodom, and yet more hopefully ye cry to God for Jerusalem: your prayer ceaseth not, and God’s grace and favor always follow it. In this sense God is constantly taking out, even from amongst the vilest of the vile, a people whom He makes to be priests and Levites for men towards Himself. Another part of their office consisted in speaking for God to the people; “For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge.” As for the Levites, they were as ushers in the schools and tutors in the families of Israel. Amongst the Levites were found those scribes who became the instructors of the people, the copyists of the law, and the expounders of its statutes and ordinances; ministers who opened up to the people, as Ezra did, the knotty points of the old covenant, and expounded the word. So not all of us in the same degree, but all of us in a measure, are to be teachers of God’s revealed truth, even as He has taught us; and He has in this place, and throughout the world, taken out a certain company whom He has made to speak as His mouth to the sons of men—men of His own choosing, and His own sending, who are as priests and Levites for His name…Now, that is parallel to the fact that God does take some of the most unlikely persons, who seem to be the most unsuitable of all, and make these to be His faithful and honored servants among the sons of men. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0992.cfm