Attributes of God

They Receive the Gospel

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, salvation 2 Comments

…and the poor have the gospel preached to them. – Matthew 11:5

I had an engraving sent to me the other day which pleased me beyond measure. It was an engraving simply but exquisitely executed. It represented a poor girl in an upper room, with a lean-to roof. There was a post driven in the ground, on which was a piece of wood, standing on which were a candle and a Bible. She was on her knees at a chair, praying, wrestling with God. Everything in the room had on it the stamp of poverty. There was the mean coverlet to the old stump bedstead; there were the walls that had never been papered, and perhaps scarcely whitewashed. It was an upper story to which she had climbed with aching knees, and where perhaps she had worked away till her fingers were worn to the bone to earn her bread at needlework. There it was that she was wrestling with God. Some would turn away and laugh at it; but it appeals to the best feelings of man, and moves the heart far more than does the fine engraving of the monarch on his knees in the grand assembly.

True it is, the gospel affects all ranks, and is equally adapted to them all; but yet we say, “If one class be more prominent than another, we believe that in Holy Scripture the poor are most of all appealed to.”…we think it rather to be an honour that the poor are evangelized, and that they listen to the gospel from our lips. I have never thought it a disgrace at any time.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0114.cfm

Oh! What a Blessed Thing It Is to Be Gospelized!

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

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. – Mark 16:15

Oh! how great a work it is to gospelize any man, and to gospelize a poor man. What does it mean? It means, to make him like the gospel. Now, the gospel is holy, just, and true, and loving, and honest, and benevolent, and kind, and gracious. So, then, to gospelize a man is to make a rogue honest, to make a harlot modest, to make a profane man serious, to make a grasping man liberal, to make a covetous man benevolent, to make the drunken man sober, to make the untruthful man truthful, to make the unkind man loving, to make the hater the lover of his species, and, in a word, to gospelize a man is, in his outward character, to bring him into such a condition that he labours to carry out the command of Christ, “Love thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.” Gospelizing, furthermore, has something to do with an inner principle; gospelizing a man means saving him from hell and making him a heavenly character; it means blotting out his sins, writing a new name upon his heart-the new name of God. It means bringing him to know his election, to put his trust in Christ, to renounce his sins, and his good works too, and to trust solely and wholly upon Jesus Christ as his Redeemer. Oh! what a blessed thing it is to be gospelized! How many of you have been so gospelized? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0114.cfm

The Mark of His Gospel

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

The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. – Matthew 11:5

“The poor have the gospel preached to them.” It was so in Christ’s day; it is to be so with Christ’s gospel to the end of time. Almost every impostor who has come into the world has aimed principally at the rich, and the mighty, and the respectable…Few of them thought it worth their while to address themselves to those who have been most wickedly called “the swinish multitude,” and to speak to them the glorious things of the gospel of Christ. But it is one delightful mark of Christ’s dispensation, that He aims first at the poor. “The poor have the gospel preached to them.” It was wise in Him to do so. If we would set fire to a building, it is best to light it at the basement; so our Saviour, when He would save a world, and convert men of all classes, and all ranks, begins at the lowest rank, that the fire may burn upwards, knowing right well that what was received by the poor, will ultimately by His grace be received by the rich also. Nevertheless, He chose this to be given to His disciples, and to be the mark of His gospel-“The poor have the gospel preached to them.”

I pray God to give to our ministers zeal and earnestness, that they may take the gospel into the streets, highways and byeways, and compel the people to come in, that the house may be filled. Oh, that God would give us this characteristic mark of His precious grace, that the poor might have the gospel preached unto them!~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0114.cfm

Give to the Poor

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 3 Comments

“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” – Luke 6:38

Many a man has lost his wealth by God’s righteous judgment for his misuse of it. Thou art God’s steward, wilt thou cheat Him? He has given thee His wealth to distribute to the poor; wilt thou not supply their needs out of what He hath given thee? Yes, surely thou wilt; I cannot believe thou wilt turn them away, so long as thou hast aught wherewith to relieve them, but wilt share what thou hast with them. Remember, if thou dost not relieve them, thou givest great and grave suspicion that thou lovest not Christ, for if ye love not Christ’s people, how can it be that ye are His disciples, since it is the mark, “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye love one another;” and how can ye love, where ye have, and give not where God hath made you rich, and yet you do not bestow? Gravely ye give cause to doubt that the love of God is in you, if the love of the brethren is not in you also. Oh! remember, when thou givest, God can give thee more. Thou hast lost nothing! thou hast put it in another purse, and God may hand it back to thee in larger measure yet. Men lose nothing by what they give to God’s saints. It would often be a heavenly investment if they bestowed it upon God’s family; but if they retain it, God hath other means to make them poor if they will not give to His cause. John Bunyan tells of a man who had a roll of cloth, and the more he cut from it, the more he had; and he says, in his rhyming way,-

“A man there was, though some did count him mad,
The more he cast away, the more he had.”

He was not much of a madman, after all, if he had more the more he gave away. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0099.cfm

Testing the Lord’s Work

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 3 Comments

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. – Romans 8:27

God often allows His people to be a tried and a poor people, just to plague the devil. The devil was never more plagued in his life, I think, than he was with Job. As long as Job was rich, Job caused much envy in Satan, but he never made him so angry as when he was poor. It was then that Satan was the most incensed against him because, after all his trials, he would not curse God and die. You know, if a man thinks he can do a thing, he will always wrap himself up in his self-complacency till he tries to do it and then fails. So Satan thinks he may overthrow one or other of God’s children. “Now, Satan,” says God, “I will give thee an opportunity of trying thy skill: one of my children is very poor; I will cut off his bread and water, I will give him the water of affliction to drink, and the bread of bitterness to eat; he shall be exceedingly tried; take him, Satan, drag him through fire and water, and see what thou canst do with him.” So Satan tries to starve out the divine life from his soul; but he cannot do it, and he finds, after all he has done, that he is defeated, and he goes away plagued and vexed, and feeling another hell within himself, though miserable enough before, because he was foiled in all his attempts to tread out the spark of life in the heart of God’s child. God often allows Satan to test the Lord’s work. It is marvelous that the crafty devil should continue to work when it all tends to the glory of God after all, but he is a devil all over, and will ever continue so. He always will keep on meddling with God’s children; he will persevere even to the last moment; till every saint is safe across the Jordan, he will still be plaguing and vexing God’s beloved. Ah! then let us rejoice, God will deliver us, and bring us off safe at last, yea, “more than conquerors, through Him that loved us.”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0099.cfm

The Master-Works of God

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life 3 Comments

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. – Romans 8:28

(G)race is tested in the poverty of believers-that they are still in a great degree an uncomplaining and unmurmuring race-that they bear up under every discouragement, believing that all things work together for their good, and that out of all their apparent evils some good shall ultimately spring-that their God will either work a deliverance for them speedily, or most assuredly support them in the trouble, as long as He is pleased to keep them there; beloved, this is no doubt one reason why God puts His people in poor circumstances. “There,” says the architect, “this building is strong.” Ay, sir, but it must be tested! Let the wind blow against it. There is a lighthouse out at sea: it is a calm night-I cannot tell whether the edifice is firm; the tempest must howl about it, and then I shall know whether it will stand. So with religion, if it were not on many occasions surrounded with tempestuous waters, we should not know that the ship was staunch and strong. If the winds did not blow upon it, as they do on our poor tried brethren, we should not know how firm and secure it is. The master-works of God are those that stand in the midst of difficulties-when all things oppose them, yet maintain their stand; these are His all-glorious works. And so His best children, those who honor Him most, are those who have grace to sustain them amidst the heaviest load of tribulations and trials. God puts His people into such circumstances, then, to show us the power of His grace.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0099.cfm

The Sovereignty of God Displayed

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, salvation 4 Comments

The LORD makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory. – 1 Samuel 2:7-8

God is pleased always to have a poor people, that He may display His sovereignty in all He does. If there were no poor saints, we should not so strongly believe the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, or, at least, if the saints believed it, as they always must and will, yet the wicked, and those who despise it, would not have so clear an evidence of it, and would not sin against such great light, which shines upon their poor dark, blind eyeballs from evident displays of sovereignty in salvation. Those who deny divine sovereignty, deny it in the face of all testimony certainly in the teeth of Scripture, for it is there positively affirmed, and God, in order that there may be something besides Scripture, has made His providence bear out the written word, and has caused many of His children to be the despised among the people. “I take whom I please,” says God. “Ye would have Me choose kings and queens first; I choose their humble servants in their kitchens before I choose their masters and mistresses in their banqueting halls. Ye would have Me take the counselor and the wise man; I take the fool first, that I may teach you to despise the wisdom of man. I take the poor before the rich, that I may humble all your pride, and teach you there is nothing in man that makes Me choose him, but that it is the sovereign will of God alone which creates men heirs of grace.” I bless God that there are poor saints, for they teach me this lesson, that God will do as He pleases with His own. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0099.cfm