Attributes of God

We Shall Not All Sleep

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

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. -1 Thessalonians 4:17

“It is appointed unto all men once to die,” yet a time shall come when some Christian men shall not die at all. We know that had Adam never sinned he would not have died, for death is the punishment of sin, and we know that Enoch and Elijah were translated to heaven without dying. Therefore it does seem to follow, that death is not absolutely necessary for a Christian. And, moreover, we are told in Scripture, that there are some who shall be “alive and remain,” when Jesus Christ shall come; and the apostle says, “I tell you a mystery-we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” There shall be some who shall be found living, of whom the apostle says, “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” We know that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom; but it is possible that they may be refined by some spiritual process, which shall preclude the necessity of dissolution. Oh! I have thought of that idea very much, and I have wondered whether it should not be possible that some of us might be in that happy number who shall not see death. Even if we are not, there is something very cheering in the thought: Christ did so conquer death that He not only delivers the lawful captive out of the prison, but He saves a band from the jaws of the monster, and leads them by his den unharmed! He not only resuscitates the dead, and puts new life into those that are slain by the fell scythe, but some He actually takes to heaven by a bye-road. He says to death-“Avaunt, thou monster! On these thou shalt never put thy hand! These are chosen men and women, and thy cold fingers shall never freeze the current of their soul. I am taking them straight to heaven without death. I will transport them in their bodies up to heaven without passing through thy gloomy portals, or having been captives in thy dreary land of shades.” How glorious is the thought, that Christ has vanquished death; that some men shall not die. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0043.cfm

Thy Father and Thy Love

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, The Father 3 Comments

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My righteousness. – Isaiah 41:10

Put me to sea, and let the ship be driven along, that wind is my Father’s breath; let the clouds gather, they are the dust of my Father’s feet; let the waterspout appear from heaven, it is my Father dipping His hand in the laver of His earthly temple. The child of God feareth nothing. All things are his Father’s; and divested now of everything that is terrible, he can look upon them with complacency, for he says, “The clouds are the dust of His feet.”

“He drives His chariot through the sky,
Beneath His feet His thunders roar;
He shakes the earth, He veils the sky,
My soul, my soul, this God adore-
He is thy Father, and thy love.”

Fall down before His feet and worship Him, for He hath loved thee by His grace. You know there are many fearful events which may befall us; but we are never afraid of them, if we are saints, because they are the dust of His feet. Pestilence may ravage this fair city once again; the thousands may fall, and the funeral march be constantly seen in our streets. Do we fear it? Nay; the pestilence is but one of our Father’s servants, and we are not afraid of it, although it walketh in darkness. There may be no wheat, the flocks may be cut off from the herd and the stall; nevertheless, famine and distress are our Father’s doings, and what our Father does we will not view with alarm. There is a man there with a sword in his hand; he is an enemy, and I fear him. My Father has a sword, and I fear him not; I rather love to see Him have a sword, because I know He will only use it for my protection. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0036.cfm

No Terror for the Child of God

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, The Father 3 Comments

The LORD has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. -Nahum 1:3

Sometimes clouds are very fearful things to mariners; they expect a storm when they see the clouds and darkness gathering. A cloud to many of us, when it forebodes a tempest is a very unpleasant thing. But let me read my text, and you will see what I mean by my remark that the most terrible things in nature are not terrible to the saints. The “clouds are the dust of His feet,”-of God’s feet. Do you not see what I mean? There is nothing terrible now, because it is only the dust of my Father’s feet. Did you ever know a child who was afraid of the dust of his father’s feet? Nay; if the child sees the dust of his father’s feet in the distance, what does he do? He rejoices because it is his father, and runs to meet him. So the most awful things in nature, even the clouds, have lost all their terror to a child of God, because He knows they are but the dust of His Father’s feet. If we stand in the midst of the lightning storm, a flash rives yon cedar, or splits the oak of the forest; another flash succeeds, and then another, till the whole firmament becomes a sea of flame. We fear not, for they are only the flashes of our Father’s sword as He waves it in the sky. Hark to the thunder as it shakes the earth, causes the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests; we shake not at the sound.

“The God that rules on high,
And thunders when He please,
That rides upon the stormy sky,
And manages the seas.

“This awful God is ours,
Our Father and our love.”

We are not afraid, for we hear our Father’s voice. And what favored child ever quaked at his Father’s speech. We love to hear that voice; although it is deep, bass, sonorous, yet we love its matchless melody, for it issues from the depths of affection. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0036.cfm

Giving Our Heavy Troubles to God

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 1 Comment

Cast your burden on the LORD, And He shall sustain you -Psalm 55:22

He shall never permit the righteous to be moved. Things which we reckon great are very little with God. If ye knew what God thought of our talk sometimes, you would be surprised at yourselves. We have some great trouble- we go burdened with it, saying, “O Lord God! what a great trouble I am burdened with.” Why, methinks, God might smile at us, as we do sometimes at a little child who takes up a load too heavy for it (but which ye could hold between your fingers), and staggereth, and saith, “Father, what a weight I am carrying.” So there are people who stagger under the great trouble which they think they are bearing. Great, beloved! There are no great troubles at all: “the clouds are the dust of His feet.” If you would but so consider them, the greatest things with you are but little things with God. Suppose, now, that ye had all the troubles of all the people in the world, that they all came pouring on your devoted head: what are cataracts of trouble to God?-” Drops in the bucket.” What are whole mountains of grief to Him? Why, “He taketh up the mountains as the dust of the balance.” And He can easily remove your trials. Sit not down then thou son of weariness and want, and say, “My troubles are too great.” Hear the voice of mercy: “Cast thy burden on the Lord and He will sustain thee, He will never suffer the righteous to be moved.”

…Ah! it does not matter how heavy troubles are if you can cast them on the Lord…Never be afraid of troubles. However heavy they are, God’s eternal shoulders can bear them. He, whose omnipotence is testified by revolving planets, and systems of enormous worlds, can well sustain you. Is His arm shortened, that He cannot save, or is He weary, that He cannot hold you fast? Your troubles are nothing to God, for the very “clouds are the dust of His feet.”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0036.cfm

God’s Sovereign Will

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life 5 Comments

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. -Genesis 50:20

Turn your eye along the page of history, and see how mysterious God’s dealings have been. Who would conceive that a Joseph sold into Egypt would be the means of redeeming a whole people from famine? Who would suppose that when an enemy should come upon the land, it should be after all but the means of bringing glory to God? Who could imagine that a harlot’s blood should mingle with the genealogy from which came the great Messiah, the Shiloh of Israel? Who could have guessed much less could have compassed, the mighty scheme of God? Providence has always been a hidden thing.

“Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sov’reign will.”

And yet, beloved, you and I are always wanting to know what God is about… We want to know what will be the consequences…We cannot see in history that this world ever went a step backwards. God is ever moving it in its orbit; and it has always progressed even when it seemed retrograding… All things are working together for good; but what the things separately are doing, it would be impossible to explain. Yet, thou child of Adam, with thy finite intellect, art continually stopping to ask, “Why is this?”… but the Omnipotent Creator, the uncreated Eternal, cannot well explain Himself to mortals whom He hath created. We cannot understand Him. It is enough for us to know that His way always must be in darkness, and that we must never expect to see much in this world. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0036.cfm

Manifested Mystery of God

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

The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. -Nahum 1:3

The ways of God are hidden ones. Cowper did not say amiss when he sang,-

“He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.”

His footsteps cannot be seen, for, planted on the sea, the next wave washes them out; and placed in the storm, rioting as the air then is, every impression of His chariot wheels is soon erased. Look at God, and at whatever He has deigned to do, and you will always see Him to have been a hidden God. He has concealed Himself, and all His ways have been veiled in the strictest mystery. Consider His works of salvation. How did He hide Himself when He determined to save mankind? He did not manifestly reveal Himself to our forefathers. He gave them simply one dim lamp of prophecy which shone in words like these “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head;” and for four thousand years God concealed His Son in mystery, and no one understood what the Son of God was to be. The smoking incense beclouded their eyes, and while it showed something of Jesus, it did hide far more. The burning victim sent its smoke up towards the sky, and it was only through the dim mists of the sacrifice that the pious Jew could see the Saviour. Angels themselves, we are told, desired to look into the mysteries of redemption, yet though they stood with their eyes intently fixed upon it, until the hour when redemption developed itself on Cavalry, not a single angel could understand it. The profoundest sage might have sought to find out how God could be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly; but he would have failed in his investigations. The most intensely pious man might meditate, with the help of that portion of God’s Spirit which was then given to the prophets, on this mighty subject, and he could not have discovered what the mystery of godliness was- “God manifest in the flesh.” God marched in clouds, “He walked in the whirlwinds;” He did not deign to tell the world what He was about to do; for it is His plan to gird Himself in darkness, and “the clouds are the dust of His feet.” Ah! and so it always has been in Providence as well as grace. God never condescends to make things very plain to His creatures. He always does rightly; and therefore, He wants His people always to believe that He does rightly. But if He showed them that He did so, there would be no room for their faith.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0036.cfm

The God of Nature

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

The LORD hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet. -Nahum 1:3

Wherever I look abroad in nature I love to discern my Father’s name spelled out in living characters; and if we had any fields a little greener than Moorfields, Smithfield, and Spafields, I would do as Isaac did, go into the fields at eventide and muse and meditate upon the God of nature. I thought in the cool of last evening I would muse with my God, by His Holy Spirit, and see what message He would give me. There I sat and watched the clouds, and learned a lesson in the great hall of Nature’s college. The first thought that struck me was this, as I saw the white clouds rolling in the sky, soon shall I see my Saviour mounted on a great white throne, riding on the clouds of heaven, to call men to judgment. My imagination could easily picture the scene, when the quick and the dead should stand before His great white throne, and should hear His voice pronounce their changeless destiny. I remembered, moreover, that text in the Proverbs, “He that observeth the wind shall not sow and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” I thought how many a time myself and my brother ministers have regarded the clouds. We have listened to the voice of prudence and of caution we have regarded the clouds, we have stops when we ought to have been sowing because we were afraid of the multitude, or we refused to reap and take in the people into our churches, because some good brother thought we were too hasty about the matter. I rose up and thought to myself, I will regard neither the clouds nor the winds, but when the wind blows a hurricane I will throw the seed with my hands, if peradventure the tempest may waft it further still; and when the clouds are thick, still I will reap, and rest assured that God will preserve His own wheat, whether I gather it under clouds or in the sunshine. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0036.cfm