Attributes of God

Cherish Your Faithful Preacher

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life Leave a comment

And He commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is He which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. – Acts 10:42

Faithful preachers are among God’s best gifts. Cherish them and be obedient to their admonitions. I have known persons become offended when a minister is “too personal;” but wise men always prize a ministry in proportion as it is personal to themselves. He who never tells me of my faults, nor makes me feel uneasy, is not likely to be the means of good to my soul. What is the use of a dog that never barks? Why have a doctor, and grow angry with him if he points out the source of your disease? Did God send us, as His messengers, to pander to your taste or flatter your vanity? We seek not your approval if it be not founded on right…Conscience makes men respect the gospel even when their depravity makes them loathe it. They are held fast by the cords which they fain would cast from them. May it often be so that while my plain dealing excites your anger, it may nevertheless have a power over you; and may every man and woman here, whether saved or unsaved, feel that the preaching is the truth of God to his or her soul; and, whether liked or not liked, may it become the permanent means of arousing from sleep, and ultimately bringing to Christ every one of you to whom these words shall come. Be sure and attend an arousing ministry and pray God to make the ministry which you now listen to more and more an arousing ministry to your own soul. Pray for the preacher, for he is in the same danger as yourselves, for he, too, is compassed with infirmity. The minister soon goes to sleep unless God wakens him; and what is more sad than to see the professed messenger of God become a traitor both to his Master and to men’s souls by a lack of zealous affection? It is ill for the sheep if the shepherd himself be asleep. Woe to the camp where the sentry is given to slumber! May God deliver our country from being overrun with preachers whose souls are insensible concerning their grand work, and who love the bread of their office better than the glory of God or the good of their hearers. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0996.cfm

Wealth Lies in the Field of the Awakened

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 1 Comment

And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. – Romans 13:11

Brethren, slumber impoverishes us. The sluggard, and the thistle and thorn, always go together, and rags and poverty follow close behind. You may miss, by your sleep, great spiritual profit. You cannot expect sleepy Christians to grow in grace. They will miss many instructive things in God’s Word, many precious promises meant only for the wakeful. They will lose high enjoyments and spiritual banquetings, for the king’s entertainments are not for those who fold their arms and toss upon the bed of indolence. Wealth lies in the field of the wakeful, but the lover of ease shall have want come upon him as an armed man. I blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in God’s holy mountain, for it is high time to awake out of sleep.

Awaken too, my brother, for you are losing opportunities for usefulness. While you sleep men are dying. See how the cemeteries are becoming crowded, how the area of them has to be enlarged. Day by day you see wending through the streets the funeral procession: men, gone beyond the reach of your instructions and your warnings, are carried to their long homes. Awake then, awake, for death is busy everywhere…Awake, for perhaps while you are asleep another heart that is now accessible to the gospel may become finally hardened. Conscience will soon become seared, and then there is nothing for zeal and earnestness to work upon. It will be too late for you to put the seal upon the wax when once it is cool. Quick, sir; while the wax is soft put the seal down! How many opportunities for good we all miss! But those who are asleep lose all their opportunities, and they will be surely required of them when the Master comes. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0996.cfm

Fuel for the Flame of Gratitude

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

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. – Psalm 103:8

We should have a vivid sense of the mercies we have received, or we cannot bless God aright for them. You who have not yet received spiritual blessings, should not be forgetful of His temporal mercies: it is surely sufficient cause for lively thanksgiving that you are not upon a bed of sickness; that you are not in the lunatic asylum; that you are not in the workhouse; that you are not on the borders of the grave; that you are not in hell; that you still have food and raiment, and that you are where the gospel is graciously presented to you. Should not all this be thought of? Should not this be fuel for the flame of gratitude? As for us who have tasted spiritual blessings, if our minds were awake, we should think of eternal love and His going forth from eternity; of redeeming love, and the streams that flow from the fount of Calvary; of God’s immutable love and His patience with our ill-manners in the wilderness; of covenant mercy, of mercies yet to come; of heaven and the bliss hereafter. Such recollections should call up our whole man to praise the Lord. If the innumerable benefits which we receive were thought of and dwelt upon, the contemplation would put a force, a volume, a body into our song…To praise God is to stand in the immediate presence of the blessed and only Potentate. Do not even seraphs veil their faces in that august presence? With what earnestness of spirit should we praise!.. Let all sleepiness be put away in the presence of the ever-wakeful Jehovah, before whose eyes all things are naked and open. He never slumbereth nor sleepeth, so as to make a pause in His mercy to us: let not our slumbering spirits cause an omission of our grateful song. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0996.cfm

The Healthy Church

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

But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer. – 1 Peter 4:7

The Church is never healthy except when she abounds in prayer. I have known prayer meetings that have been like the bells to the parish steeple-a very poor parish where there were never enough bells to ring a chime. The minister has had to pray twice and read a long chapter, in order to spin out the time, or to meet the want yet more efficiently, he has caned upon a brother who had the gift of supplicating for twenty-five minutes, and then concluded by asking pardon for his short comings…Shut up that house in which men have ceased to pray; or if you open it, let your opening be a meeting for hearty and earnest prayer. I have to mourn and confess in my own case, that I have had to feel in myself-and I think I can speak for many others-a want of prayerfulness with regard to missionary effort especially…We do pray for our own families, and our own congregations, but the heathens are across the sea, many miles away…Many Christians might see whole months pass with them without carrying the cause of the heathen, who are in darkness, before the throne of God; and how can we expect, while this unhealthiness exists among us, that God will bless our missionary operations. Zion must avail before she can bring forth children. She may use all her weapons but if she keeps back the great battering-ram of prayer, she will never break the walls of the spiritual Jericho. She may use every other instrument, but unless she takes John Bunyan’s weapon of “all-prayer,” she will never put to rout the great enemy of souls. Yes, my brethren, we want faithfulness, we want healthiness, we want a prayerful spirit given to us, then we may conclude that all is well with us. It shall be left to each individual heart, and each member of the Church, to answer for himself the question whether his own church is in a state of spiritual health taking these things as a test, namely, purity, soundness, unity, and prayerfulness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0314.cfm

Contending for the Health of the Church

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 2 Comments

But speaking the truth in love, may (we) grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ… – Ephesians 4:15

I do not think the time will ever come when we shall all of us see eye to eye and shall all use the same terms and phrases in setting forth doctrinal truths. I do not imagine there ever will be a period, unless it should be in that long looked for millennium, when every brother is able to subscribe to every other brother’s creed; when we shall be identical in our apprehensions, experiences, and expositions of the gospel in the fullest sense of the word. But I do maintain there should be, and there must be if our churches are to be healthy and sound, a constant adherence to the fundamental doctrines of divine truth…if it should ever come to be a matter which casts doubts upon the divinity of Christ, or the personality of the Holy Ghost; if it should come to a matter of using gospel terms in a sense the most contrary to that which has ever been attached to them in any age of the truth; if it should ever come to the marring and spoiling of our ideas of Divine justice, and of that great atonement which is the basis of the whole gospel, as they have been delivered to us; then it is time, my brethren, once for all that the scabbard be thrown aside, that the sword be drawn. Against any who assails those precious vital truths which constitute the heart of our holy religion, we must contend even to the death…Verily there were giants at one time, when the sons of God saw the daughters of men and we may live to see gigantic heresies, when God’s own children may look upon the fair daughters of philosophy, and monster delusions shall stalk across the earth. A want of union about truth too clearly proves that the body of the Church is not in a healthy state…We must look to the preservation of the health of the Church. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0314.cfm

In Our Purity Alone We Stand

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

“He maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat. He sendeth forth His commandment upon earth: His word runneth very swiftly.”-Psalm 147:14.-15.

A Church can never be in a sound and satisfactory state for labor, she never can be in such a condition that God can smile upon her complacently, if she be mixed up with the world, if her sons and daughters be not sufficiently distinguished from the world to be manifestly God’s people…If we take into our churches those who are not converted, we swell our numbers, but we diminish our real strength. We might need to purchase a larger church-book, we might, perhaps, be able to parade our numbers before the world, and we might even flatter ourselves with our apparent prosperity till we intoxicate our own brain, but we should be going backward when we think we are going forward. We have not conquered the world; we have only yielded to it. We have not brought the world up to us, we have only brought ourselves down to it. We have not Christianized an ungodly generation, but we have adulterated Christianity. We have brought the chaste spouse of Christ to commit fornication among the people…If we could to-morrow bring into the Church a sufficient number of ungodly but moral men to double our numbers, to double our subscriptions, to double our places of worship, to enable us to double the number of our missionaries, we should, by succumbing to the temptation, procure a curse instead of a blessing. In our purity, and in our purity alone, we stand…Oh! that God might grant to each of us, who are the pastors of the Church, that unceasing vigilance and constant watchfulness whereby we shall be able to detect the wolves in sheep’s clothing, and whereby we shall be able to say calmly, sternly, yet lovingly, to those who come before us seeking communion, without satisfactory evident that they belong to the living family of God, “You must go your way until the Spirit of God hath touched your heart, for until you have received the living faith in Jesus, we cannot receive you into the number of His faithful ones.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0314.cfm

But, Blessed But

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

“One who is righteous has many adversities, but the LORD rescues him from them all.” – Psalm 34:19

Scripture does not flatter us like the story books with the idea that goodness will secure us from trouble; on the contrary, we are again and again warned to expect tribulation while we are in this body…It is the earthly portion of the elect to find thorns and briers growing in their pathway, yes, to lie down among them, finding their rest broken and disturbed by sorrow.

But, bless-ed but, how it takes the sting out of the previous sentence! “But the LORD rescues him from them all.” Through troops of ills Jehovah shall lead His redeemed scatheless and triumphant. There is an end to the believer’s affliction, and a joyful end too. None of his trials can hurt so much as a hair of his head, neither can the furnace hold him for a moment after the Lord bids him come forth of it. The same Lord who sends the afflictions will also recall them when His design is accomplished, but He will never allow the fiercest of them to rend and devour His beloved.

Lord, we thank You now in the retrospect for the trials which we have endured. Some of us have been brought very low with physical pain and mental weariness, and others have been sore smitten with bereavement, losses and crosses, and persecutions; but there is not one out of all our trials which we could have afforded to have been without. No, Lord, all has been ordered well; there was a need-be for every twig of the rod, and we desire now to thank you that we can see in looking back, how all things have even now worked together for good, though we know we cannot see the end as yet. Amen. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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