Attributes of God

Sovereign Counsellor in Creation

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

The LORD possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. – Proverbs 8:22,23

We are told in the passage we have read that the Lord Jesus Christ, who represents Himself as Wisdom, was with God before the world was created, and we have every reason to believe that we are to understand this as meaning, that He was not only with God in company, but with God in co-operation. Besides, we have other Scriptures to prove that “all things were made by Him and without Him was not any thing made that was made.” And to quote yet another passage that clinches this truth. God said, “Let Us make man;“ so that a part of the consultation was with reference to the making of worlds, and the creatures that should inhabit them. I believe that in the sovereign council of eternity, the mountains were weighed in scales, and the hills in balances; then was it fixed in sovereign council how far the sea should go, and where should be its bounds-when the sun should arise and come forth, like a giant from the chambers of his darkness, and when he should return again to his couch of rest. Then did God decree the moment when he should say, “Let there be light,” and the moment when the sun should be turned into darkness, and the moon into a clot of blood. Then did He ordain the form and size of every angel, and the destinies of every creature; then did He sketch in His infinite thought, the eagle as he soared to heaven and the worm as he burrowed into the earth. Then the little as well as the great, the minute as well as the immense, came under the sovereign decree of God. Christ was a Counsellor in the matter of creation; with none else took He counsel; none else instructed Him. Christ was the Counsellor for all the wondrous works of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

A Counsellor with God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And His name will be called…Counsellor… – Isaiah 9:6

Men take weeks and months and sometimes years, to think out a thing that is surrounded with difficulties; they have to find the clue with much research; enveloped in folds of mystery, they have to take off first one garment and then another, before they find out the naked glorious truth. Not so God. God’s deliberations are as flashes of lightning; they are as wise as if he had been eternally considering, but the thoughts of His heart, though swift as lightning, are as perfect as the whole system of the universe. The reason why God is represented as holding a council, if I think rightly, is this: that we might understand how wise God is. “In the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom.” It is for us to think that in the council of the Eternal Three, each Person in the undivided Trinity being omniscient and full of wisdom, there must have been the sum total of all wisdom. It was to show the unanimity and co-operation of the sacred Persons: God the Father hath done nothing alone in creation or salvation. Jesus Christ hath done nothing alone; for even the work of His redemption, albeit that He suffered in some sense alone, needed the sustaining hand of the Spirit, and the accepting smile of the Father, before it could be completed. God said not, “I will make man,” but “Let Us make man in Our own image.” God saith not merely, “I will save,” but the inference from the declarations of Scripture is, that the design of the three Persons of the blessed Trinity was to save a people to Themselves, who should show forth Their praise. It was, then, for our sakes, not for God’s sake, the council was held-that we might know the unanimity of the glorious Persons, and the deep wisdom of Their devices. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

Our Counsellor

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

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor.”- Isaiah 9:6

It was by a counsellor that this world was ruined. Did not Satan mask himself in the serpent, and counsel the woman with exceeding craftiness, that she should take unto herself of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, in the hope that thereby she should be as God? Was it not that evil counsel which provoked our mother to rebel against her Maker, and did it not as the effect of sin, bring death into this world with all its train of woe? Ah! beloved, it was meet that the world should have a Counsellor to restore it, if it had a counsellor to destroy it. It was by counsel that it fell and certainly, without counsel it never could have arisen. But mark the difficulties that surrounded such a Counsellor. ‘Tis easy to counsel mischief; but how hard to counsel wisely! To cast down is easy, but to build up how hard! To confuse this world and bring upon it all its train of ills was, an easy thing. A woman plucked the fruit, and it was done; but to restore order to this confusion, to sweep away the evils which brooded over this fair earth, this was work indeed, and “Wonderful” was that Christ who came forward to attempt the work, and who in the plentitude of His wisdom hath certainly accomplished it, to His own honor and glory, and to our comfort and safety.

Now, our Lord Jesus Christ is a Counsellor in a three-fold sense. First, he is God’s Counsellor; he sits in the cabinet council of the King of heaven; he has admittance into the privy chamber, and is the Counsellor with God. In the second place, Christ is a Counsellor in the sense which the Septuagint translation appends to this term. Christ is said to be the angel of the great council. He is a Counsellor in that he communicates to us in God’s behalf, what has been done in the great council before the foundation of the world. And thirdly, Christ is a Counsellor to us and with us, because we can consult with him, and he doth counsel and advise us as to the right way and the path of peace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0215.cfm

The Blood is the Life Thereof

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

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. – 1 Peter 1:18,19

Martin Luther used to say that every sermon ought to have the doctrine of justification by faith in it. True; but let it have the doctrine of atonement in it. He says he could not get the doctrine of justification by faith in to the Wurtembergers’ heads, and he felt half inclined to take the book into the pulpit and fling it at their heads, in order to get it in. I am afraid he would not have succeeded if he had. But oh! how would I try to hammer again, and again, and again upon this one nail, “The blood is the life thereof.” “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

Christ giving up His life in pouring out His blood-it is this that gives pardon and peace to every one of you, if you will but look to Him- pardon now, complete pardon; pardon for ever. Look away from all other confidences and rely upon the sufferings and the death of the Incarnate God, who has gone into the heavens, and who lives today to plead before His Father’s throne, the merit of the blood which, on Calvary, He poured forth for sinners. As I shall meet you all in that great day, when the crucified One shall come as the King and Lord of all, which day is hastening on apace, as I shall meet you then, I pray you bear me witness that I have striven to tell you in all simplicity what is the way of salvation; and if you reject it, do me this favour, to say that at least I have proffered to you in Jehovah’s name this, His gospel, and have earnestly urged you to accept it, that you may be saved. But the rather I would God that I might meet you there, all covered in the one atonement, clothed in the one righteousness, and accepted in the one Saviour, and then together will we sing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood to receive honour, and power, and dominion for ever and ever.” Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3418.cfm

Your Ruin or His Salvation?

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

“Without shedding of blood there is no remission.”- Hebrews 9:22

If my Surety took my sin, He released me, and I am clear. Who shall resuscitate judgment against me when I have been condemned in the person of my Saviour? Who shall commit me to the flames of Gehenna, when Christ, my Substitute, has suffered the tantamount of hell for me? Who shall lay anything to my charge when Christ has had all my crimes laid to His charge, answered for them, expiated them, and received the token of quittance from them, in that He was raised from the dead that He might openly vindicate that justification in which by grace I am called and privileged to share? This is all very simple, it lies in a nutshell, but do we all receive it-have we all accepted it? Oh! my dear hearers, the text is full of warning to some of you. You may have an amiable disposition, an excellent character, a serious turn of mind, but you scruple at accepting Christ; you stumble at this stumbling-stone; you split on this rock. How can I meet your hapless case? I shall not reason with you. I forbear to enter into any argument. I ask you one question. Do you believe this Bible to be inspired of God? Look, then, at that passage, “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission.” What say you? Is it not plain, absolute, conclusive? Allow me to draw the inference. If you have not an interest in the blood-shedding, is there any remission for you? Can there be? Your own sins are on your head now. Of your hand shall they be demanded at the coming of the great Judge.

On the other hand, what a far-reaching consolation the text gives us! “Without shedding of blood there is no remission,” but where there is the blood-shedding, there is remission. If thou hast come to Christ, thou art saved. If thou canst say from thy very heart: –

“My faith doth lay her hand
On that dear head of Thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And here confess my sin.”

– then, your sin is gone. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3418.cfm

Justice and Mercy

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

The soul that sins shall die. – Ezekiel 18:4,20

We owe to God a debt of punishment for sin. Was that debt due or not? If the law was right, the penalty ought to be exacted. The law, then, being a righteous law, and the penalty just, shall God do an unjust thing? Would you have Him to be unjust? He had declared that the soul that sinned should die; would you have God to be a liar? Shall He eat His words to save His creatures? The law’s sentence must be carried out. It was inevitable that if God maintained the prerogative of His holiness, He must punish the sins that men have committed. How, then, should He save us? Behold the plan! His dear Son, the Lord of glory, takes upon Himself human nature, comes into the place of as many as the Father gave Him, stands in their standing, and when the sentence of justice has been proclaimed, and the sword of vengeance has leaped out of its scabbard, behold the glorious Substitute bares His arm, and He says, “Strike, O sword, but strike Me, and let My people go.” Into the very soul of Jesus the sword of the law pierced, and His blood was shed, the blood, not of one who was man only, but of One who, by His being an eternal Spirit, was able to offer up Himself without spot unto God, in a way which gave infinite efficacy to His sufferings. He, through the eternal Spirit, we are told, offered Himself without spot to God. Being in His own nature infinitely beyond the nature of man, comprehending all the natures of man, as it were, within Himself, by reason of the majesty of His person, He was able to offer an atonement to God of infinite, boundless, inconceivable sufficiency. What our Lord suffered none of us can tell. I am sure of this: I would not disparage or under-estimate His physical sufferings-the tortures He endured in His body-but I am equally sure that we can none of us exaggerate or over-value the sufferings of such a soul as His; they are beyond all conception…”Yet it pleased the Father to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief. “Now, therefore, God is able to forgive sin. He has punished the sin on Christ; it becomes justice, as well as mercy, that God should blot out those debts which have been paid. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3418.cfm

No Blood Shed, No Pardon

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

Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. – Hebrews 9:22

Though there be pardon of sin, it is never without blood. That is a sweeping sentence, for there are some in this world that are trusting for the pardon of sin to their repentance. It, beyond question, is your duty to repent of your sin. If you have disobeyed God, you should be sorry for it. To cease from sin is but the duty of the creature, else sin is not the violation of God’s holy law. But be it known unto you, that all the repentance in the world cannot blot out the smallest sin. If you had only one sinful thought cross your mind, and you should grieve over that all the days of your life, yet the stain of that sin could not be removed even by the anguish it cost you. Repentance is the work of the Spirit of God, it is a very precious gift, and is a sign of grace; but there is no atoning power in repentance. In a sea full of penitential tears, there is not the power or the virtue to wash out one spot of this hideous uncleanness. Without the blood-shedding, there is no remission. But others suppose that, at any rate, active reformation growing out of repentance may achieve the task. What if drunkenness be given up, and temperance become the rule? What if licentiousness be abandoned, and chastity adorn the character? What if dishonest dealing be relinquished, and integrity be scrupulously maintained in every action? I say, ’tis well; I would to God such reformations took place everywhere-yet for all that, debts already incurred are not paid by our not getting into debt further, and past delinquencies are not condoned by future good behaviour. So sin is not remitted by reformation. …The cry in the olden days was, “Wherewithal shall we come before God?” Here stands the sentence; here for ever must it stand, “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3418.cfm