Attributes of God

Say, “and not I”

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 3 Comments

Should it be according to thy mind? He will recompense it, whether thou refuse, or whether thou choose; and not I: therefore speak what thou knowest. Job 34:33

Whenever you find anyone opposing God, say to yourself, “and not I.” When there is any wrong thing being done, and it comes under your notice, say, “and not I.” Take care that you go not with a multitude to do evil; do not take upon your tongue just what others may be saying, but bear your individual protest against the evil; even if you stand alone, say, “and not I.”

Whoever opposes God should know that he is not dealing with a man like himself. If you hear a preacher make a statement, and you feel, “That is not the Word of the Lord,” pray God to forgive him for his sin in making it; but if he speaks with the sound of his Master’s feet behind him and what he says is the Word of God, then do not trifle with it. If it be clearly a revealed truth, it may grate against your feelings, and set your teeth on edge; but what of that? You had better get your teeth and your feelings put right, for the truth of God cannot be altered in order to please you. Someone says, “I cannot believe that statement, because it seems too shocking.” That is just why I do believe it, for it does me good by shocking me; and if it is in God’s Word, I am bound to accept it. “Oh!” you say, “but something within me revolts against it.” It is only natural it should do so, for “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked;” and it naturally cries out against the thing that is most surely true. The supreme majesty of God’s Word is that before which we have to bow, and not the insignificant usurpers of our inward feelings, fancies, and whims. “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2670.cfm

 

The Eternal Purpose of God

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

He will recompense it, whether thou refuse, or whether thou choose. – Job 34:33

Whatever our will may be, God will carry out His own purpose. As surely as God is God, He will never be defeated in anything. He who is omniscient, and therefore sees the end from the beginning, is also omnipotent, and therefore can work His own will exactly as He chooses,-He will never be baffled by the will of men. I believe in the free agency of man as much as anyone who lives; but I equally believe in the eternal purpose of God. If you ask, “How do you reconcile those beliefs?” I answer,-They have never been at variance yet, so there is no need to attempt to reconcile them. They are like two parallel lines, which will run side by side for ever;-man responsible because he does what he wills, and God infinitely glorious, achieving His own purposes, not only in the world of dead, inert matter, but also through those who are free agents; without changing them in the least degree, leaving them just as free as ever they were, He yet, in every jot and tittle, performs the eternal purpose of His will.

Christ did not die in vain. He will rejoice in every one whom He purchased with His blood. He will not lose one of the jewels that are to deck His crown for ever. You may strive against His kingdom, but that kingdom will come when He pleases. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2670.cfm

 

 

Is Not God’s Way the Best?

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, salvation Leave a comment

“For who has known the mind of the LORD ?Or who has become His counselor?” – Romans 11:34 (Isaiah 40:13)

The mind of God is so infinitely great, and good, and wise, that it cannot be supposed that, even if He left the plan of salvation to our option, we could choose anything half as good as what He decrees and appoints. Should He, for a single moment, hold His sovereignty in abeyance, and allow us to be kings and princes on our own account, what follies we should perpetrate! We should choose a way of salvation that would not honour God, nor destroy evil, nor even be good for our own selves. Some people would like a heaven into which they could enter without being born again; but what kind of heaven would that be! Some would like to have joy and peace without believing in Christ. Some would like to have eternal felicity, and yet indulge their lusts. This would be an evil of the most awful kind. It is better that sin should bring to man infinite sorrow than that it should be linked with eternal enjoyment. The mischief of it is that it does get linked with enjoyment for a while by foolish men, who forget what must come afterwards; but God has never joined these two things together, it is only wicked men who have pretended to celebrate this unholy marriage. God proclaims a perpetual separation between sin and happiness, and it is well that it should be so.Is not God’s way the best? -C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2670.cfm

 

In God’s Own Way

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

For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” – Romans 9:15

There is no man living who has any absolute right to receive anything from God except destruction. That terrible doom we have all merited, but nothing beyond that. If we were shut up in prison, and kept upon dry bread, so long as we were out of hell, we should still be under obligation to God. If the Lord should choose to show mercy to only one man in the world, He has a perfect right to do so; if He chooses to give it to a few, or if He chooses to give it to all, He has the right to do so. He is absolutely sovereign, and these are the words that He would have every one of us to hear and to heed: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” The crown rights of the King of kings must never be assailed; for us beggars to turn choosers, and to dictate to God what He shall give to us;-for us condemned criminals to begin to make bargains with God as to how He shall preserve our lives, if He chooses to do so,-oh, this will never do! You know, dear friends, that when we give even a trifling charity, we like to do it in our own way.

When anything comes to us entirely as a gift, it is not for us to cavil at it, but to accept it; and this is specially true of God’s great gift of salvation. O Lord, if Thou wilt but save me, save me anyhow! If I may be delivered from this accursed sin of mine, and made pure and holy, do it, Lord, after Thine own gracious fashion! It is not for me to suggest any plan to Thee, but to leave myself entirely in Thy hands, and to let it be according to Thy mind.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2670.cfm

Do Not Strive With God

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

Should it be according to thy mind? He will recompense it, whether thou refuse, or whether thou choose; and not I: therefore speak what thou knowest. Job 34:33

Dear friends, it is never wise to dispute with God. Let a man strive with his fellow, but not with his Maker. If we must discuss any point, let it be with imperfect beings like ourselves, but not with the infallible and infinitely wise God…

Do you object to the very basis of the plan (of salvation), namely, that God will forgive sin through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, His Son? I know that some do object to this; they cannot bear to hear about atonement by blood, or justification by imputed righteousness. Others, who will not say that they object to atonement, spirit away the very meaning of it. They cannot endure that glorious doctrine of substitution which is such a joy to us. Christ standing in the sinner’s stead, and the sinner then standing in the place of Christ,-Christ taking the sinner’s sin, and the sinner wearing Christ’s righteousness,-all this they absolutely reject…Yet, that is God’s plan of salvation, and some of us know, in our inmost hearts, that we never had peace until we accepted that plan of salvation; and that now, if it should be taken away from us, we should lose all the joy of existence, and should go back to the despair which, at one time, was so heavy upon us that we could sympathize with Job when he said, “My soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life.”

We could better afford to die, and rot in our graves, than that we should lose our Saviour, and His atoning blood, and justifying righteousness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2670.cfm

 

 

A Spirit of Unselfish Devotion

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life Leave a comment

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. – 1 Corinthians 2:12

The spirit of this world is often selfish; it is always a spirit that forgets God, that ignores the existence of a Creator in His own world, the land which He makes fat by His own bounty. Men with God’s breath in their nostrils forget Him who makes them live. Now, your spirit should be one of unselfish devotion, a spirit always conscious of His presence, bowed down with the weight, or raised up with the cheer of Hagar’s exclamation-“Thou God seeest me;” a spirit which watcheth humbly before God, and seeketh to know His will and to do it through the grace of God given to you. Such a spirit as this, without the drab of one sect, or the phylacteries of another, will soon make you quite as distinct from your fellow men as ever meats and drinks could make the Jews a separate people.

A Christian never considers what is usual, but what is right; he does not estimate a wrong by its commonness; he counts that a fraud, and a falsehood will be as much fraud and falsehood, though all the world shall agree to practice it, as though but one man should do it in the dark. The believer reads things, not in man’s light, in the obscurity of which so many blind bats are willing to fly, but he reads things in the sunlight of heaven. If a thing be right though he lose by it, it is done; if it be wrong, though he should become as rich as Croesus by allowing it, he scorns the sin for his Master’s sake. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0499.cfm

The Gospel’s Reception

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. – 2 Corinthians 4:4-3

Two men go up to the temple to worship, they take their seats side by side in God’s house; the Word is preached to them both; they both hear it, perhaps with like attention; the one goes his way to forget, the other remembers. They come again: the one listens, and the minister is to him as one that playeth a goodly tune upon an instrument: the other listens and weeps; he feels that the word is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. It comes home to his conscience; it pierces him, cuts him to the quick; every word seems to be as an arrow shot from the bow of God and finding a target in his conscience. And now they come again. The one feels the word at last to be his; he has been led to repentance and faith in Christ through it, and now comes up to sing God’s praises as His accepted child; while the other remains to sing as a mere formalist-to join in worship in which he feels but little interest-to lift up his voice in a prayer when his heart is far absent. If I had here this morning a heap of steel filings and of ashes mixed together, and I wanted to detect the difference between the two, I should have nothing to do but to thrust in a magnet; the filings would be attracted and the ashes would remain. So with this congregation. If I would know to-day who are those who are of God’s Israel, and who are still the baseborn Egyptians, there is nothing needed but to preach the gospel. The gospel finds out God’s people. it has an affinity to them. When it comes to them they receive it, God’s Holy Spirit opening their hearts; they lay hold of it and rejoice in it; while those who are not God’s, who have no part or interest in the redemption of Christ, hear it in vain and are even hardened by it and go their way to sin with a higher hand, after all the warnings they have received.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0305.cfm