Attributes of God

May the Great Lord Save You!

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. – John 3:36

I will let my words drop rapidly without any ornament, and remind you, dear friend, that if you have been a hearer and faith has not come to you, you are, this moment, in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity. You believe not in Christ, and you make God a liar, because ye have not believed in His only-begotten Son. The wrath of God abideth on you. You are dead while you live. Without God, without Christ, and strangers to the covenant of promise. My soul pities you—will you not pity yourselves? Hearers only; faithless, graceless, Christless! Christ died, but you have no part in His death. His blood cleanses from sin, but your sin remains upon you. Christ has risen, and He pleads before the throne, —you have no part in that intercession. He is preparing a place for His people, but that place is not for you. Oh, unhappy soul! oh, wretched soul! out of favor with God, at enmity with eternal love, destitute of eternal life! Truly, if Jesus were here, He would weep over you, as He did over Jerusalem, and say, “How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.”

Ah, remember, though your present state is terrible it is not all. You will soon die, and you will die without faith. Remember that word of Christ, it is one of the most terrible I know of, “if ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” To die in a ditch, to die in prison, to die on the gallows, none of us would desire it; but to die in your sins! O God, it is hell, it is eternal damnation. May the great Lord save you!

Eternal Father, Thou who art mighty to save, let not one among us go down into the pit with a lie in his right hand, refusing to accept the gospel of Thy blessed Son! The Lord save you all, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

Get This Chief Blessing

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

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. – John 3:36

See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done. – Hebrews 12:16,17

I charge each one of you to buy the Truth of God, and sell it not, to lay up for yourself treasures in Heaven, to get Christ, to get peace and pardon, to get acceptance with God, to get Heaven in the way that this Book tells you to get it! If you only succeed in getting broad acres of fertile fields, they must all be left! If you amass a great store of gold and silver, it must all be left to your heirs who will probably laugh at the thought of the fool who hoarded so much for them to scatter! Do not act so foolishly, but seek to get the chief blessing! May God graciously enable you to get it this very hour!

Remember that if you leave this world without getting this blessing, you will, like Esau, find no place of repentance, though you seek it carefully with tears. Isaac could not take back what he had said, and God will never alter what He has said. There has been spreading in this country and in other lands, also, the idea of universal salvation—and mark you, wherever that doctrine spreads, vice must and will spread as the natural and inevitable consequence! When men are taught to believe in ultimate universal salvation, their immediate and legitimate inference is, “Then we may live as we like and all will be right in the end.” And they will live as they like, but all will not be right in the end! They are ambassadors of the devil who teach that lying doctrine, and they will have to answer for it at the Judgment Bar of God! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Do Search into the Truth

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation

But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? – Romans 10:16

With some, hearing does not bring faith, because they hear without any after meditation. There is a great trial going on, as you know, in the Tichborne case. Every juryman, I doubt not, wants to judge righteously. I am sure the sleepy one is not likely to do so, and I am pretty clear that the juryman who is most likely to get at the truth will be the man who, when he gets away from the court, having heard attentively all the time, takes home the notes of the evidence, weighs it, and makes comparisons, and endeavors to sift out the truth. So I would say to you when you hear us preach, sift the sermon afterwards, turn our sermons over, pick holes in them if you like, and find out our mistakes; but oh, do search into the truth, and be not content till you find it. If you want to find Christ, the wisdom of God, you should seek for Him as for silver. You are likely to believe the truth when your mind turns it over and over. Here is a bag, and I am willing to make a man rich, and, therefore, I drop into it pound after pound, but I find that the bag is just as empty as before; the reason is plain, —there are holes in the bag, and the money drops through. Too many hearers are as a bag full of holes, and golden sermons will not bless them because they wilfully forget all. They will never come to faith because they do but look at their face in the glass of the Word and go their way and forget what manner of men they are. Oh, for hearers who only need to know the gospel, and the evidence of it, and then consent thereto, saying, “It is the truth of God, I cannot quarrel with it; I joyfully receive it.” Such are saved souls.

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

Sleepy and Prejudiced Hearers

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, the unbelieving life

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. – Romans 10:17,13

Sleepy hearers are not likely to be led to faith. Eutychus may fall from the third loft and be taken up for dead, but he is not likely to become a believer by sleeping, even though Paul should be the preacher. We want attention in order to the real reception of the Word. Oh how pleasant it is to preach to earnest hearers who lean forward to catch every syllable, anxious to know how they can be saved. Wandering hearts lose the benefit of the truth, and vain minds trifle away the privilege of a gospel ministry. Take heed how ye hear, otherwise ye may remain hearers only, and so perish in unbelief.

With many a want of candor is another reason why faith does not come by hearing. If a man hears with a prejudiced heart, making up his mind before hand what he will believe, he is not likely to be convinced, he puts himself as far as he can out of the reach of benefit. When the heart rebels against the Word: when it says, “If this be true, I am living a bad life, and I shall have to give up my pleasures, therefore I will not accept it.” Well then, faith does not come and cannot come by such hearing. Faith comes by hearing when a man does, as it were, give himself up to the Word of God.

When it is the soul that is concerned, I would say to the preacher, “Sir, do not flatter me, do not tell me that which will please but delude me; I do not want your flattery, I do not want your fine words. Sir, tell me what I am, and where I am in the sight of God, and how I can be saved; for it will little satisfy me to wake up in hell and remember that I used to hear a fine orator. I want to be saved in deed and of a truth.”

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

Unbeliever, Are You Hearing the Gospel?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, the unbelieving life

But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. – Romans 10:16,18

Many persons come to hear, but they have no wish to be led into faith. Like the butterflies which flit from flower to flower, they extract no honey because they come not for such a purpose: while the bees dive into the cups and bells of the flowers and come up loaded with their luscious food. Oh, if men came to hear, praying to be endowed with faith in Jesus, faith would surely come to them by hearing. Many persons in hearing a sermon, are like children looking at a cornfield—it is full of yellow garlic, or perhaps of scarlet poppies, and they cry “What a lovely field;” but the farmer thinks not so, he is looking for the wheat. Many a hearer watches for pretty speeches and flowery metaphors, and cries, “How well he puts it! What a well-turned sentence! How sweetly he quotes poetry!” and so on. Bah! Is that what you come to God’s House for? O fools and slow of heart, is this your end in hearing the life-giving gospel of the bleeding Lamb? I assure you it is not this that we are aiming at in preaching to you. If you came to look after the good corn, you would care little for the gaudy poppies of a flaunting eloquence so much regarded by the men of these days. Come with the intent to find faith in Jesus; cry to God to make His word effectual to your salvation, and then hearing will be quite another business with you. Alas I fear you will perish, let us preach as we may, while we are regarded by you as mere orators to be criticized, and not as witnesses whose testimony is to be weighed.

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

The Gospel’s Authority

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, The Holy Spirit

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. – Romans 10:13

Faith has come not so much through hearing the statement of the gospel as from hearing of its authority. I may believe a statement because it looks like truth. I may, on the other hand, accept it not at all because I have myself perceived the apparent truth of it, but because of the person who tells it to me. And this is a very right and acceptable kind of faith. What has God said about my salvation? Before I hear it, I am prepared to believe it on the testimony of God. He says it, and that is enough for me. I believe this Bible to be His book; I hear what it says, and whatsoever the Lord God hath said I must and will receive, whether it appears plain or not. There are persons who when they have heard the gospel preached have not at first believed it, but if it has pleased the Spirit of God to lead the minister to show that the gospel is of divine appointment, that the way proclaimed is ordained by God Himself, and that God has set the sanction of His promise upon it—”He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved”—and has also set upon it the second sanction of His threatening—”He that believeth not shall be damned”—then they have yielded and given over all further question. God bids them trust in Jesus, and they do so through His grace. Without canvassing the statement itself they receive what God teaches, and since He hath set forth Christ to be a propitiation for sin they receive Him us such: since He has said, “Look unto Me and be saved,” they look because God bids them look, and they are saved. To believe in Jesus is a command from God’s own mouth, and is, therefore, to be obeyed, and the more so, because “he that believeth not God hath made Him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son; and this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.”

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

Saved by Hearing of the Pity and Love of Jesus

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

…faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. – Romans 10:17

In many, I do not doubt, faith has come through hearing of the condescending pity and the melting love of Jesus. Oh, that we dwelt more on this; that He loved His enemies, that He died for the ungodly, that His heart yearns over the lost sheep, that He is willing to receive prodigal sons, for He is full of grace and truth.

“His heart is made of tenderness,
His bowels melt with love.”

When such texts as the following have been preached on:—”This man receiveth sinners.” “Come unto Me all ye that labor.” “Ho, every one that thirsteth,” etc. “All manner of sin and transgression shall be forgiven unto men.” “Whosoever will, let him come and take the water of life freely.” “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out,” that melting strain has touched the heart, and led the most hardened to believe in a Savior so kind to the undeserving. Men have found it impossible not to believe in a friend so self-sacrificing, a Redeemer so altogether lovely. The sweet love of Jesus has an omnipotence in it to win souls. They yield “by mighty love subdued,” unable to resist its charms, and as if they could hold out no longer, they throw themselves by an act of faith into the Savior’s arms. I can well understand their singing, “I do believe, I must believe in such a friend as this.” Faith comes by hearing of the free forgiveness procured by the agony, the stripes, the wounds, the death of Jesus, the lover of our souls.

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon