Character of Jesus

House Cleaning

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

“Thus says the LORD: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.’ ” – 2 Kings 20:1

Our body, our property, our family, this present life, and all its surroundings are in the text described as our house. As believers in Jesus Christ, if there is anything deficient in us, if there be anything excessive in us, if there be aught that is contrary to the Lord’s mind and will, may the Holy Spirit come and correct it all, so that our house may be set in order!.. Some of your houses need sweeping. The dust and filth of sin are lying all over the floors. You want the precious blood to be sprinkled, or else if the Lord begins to sweep with the bosom of the law, it will happen, as Bunyan tells us, that the dust will be enough to choke your prayers or blind the eyes of your faith. May the Gospel come and sprinkle the water of grace and then may Christ come in and sweep your house. But you need more than sweeping—your house wants washing. Every floor needs cleansing and there is no one but the Lord Jesus Christ who can do this. Nothing can make you clean but His blood. In many of your houses the windows are very filthy and the light of the glorious Gospel cannot enter, so as to bring with it an intelligent conception of the things of God. Oh, that this may be set right! The very drainage in some men’s houses is neglected. Many a foul thing stagnates, ferments, and pollutes their souls. Ah! what is there that is in order in the unregenerate man? To every one in that state, the text calls loudly, “Set thine house in order.” But sirs, unless Christ comes to help you, it is a hopeless task. Unless Christ and His Holy Spirit come to the rescue, your houses will remain out of order still, everything filthy and everything disarranged, and when the great King shall come and find it so, woe unto you, woe unto you, in the day of His appearing! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Are You Ready for Judgement Day?

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And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. – Hebrews 9:27

Do you ask, “What is God’s order?”You can see, by reading the twentieth chapter of the Book of Exodus what His thought of order was when He wrote the ten commands. You can learn what His order is under the Gospel, for we read that a new commandment has Christ given to us, that we love one another. And yet again, “This is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ.” Dear friend, is your house, in this sense, right with God? If, at this moment, you had to surrender possession, is everything ordered as you would wish it to be? If the arrow of death should now fly through this sanctuary and find a target in your heart at this moment, is it all right, is it all right, IS IT ALL RIGHT, as you would wish to have it when God’s eye shall look upon you in the day of judgment? What if in a single moment we should see the heavens on a blaze, and the earth should rock beneath our feet, and the dead should rise from their sepulchres? What if, instead of this Tabernacle and its gathered crowd, we should now suddenly see the King Himself upon the great white throne and hear the archangel’s trumpet ringing out the notes, “Awake, ye dead, and come to judgment,” is everything with us as we should like to have it for the blaze of that tremendous day and the inspection of that awful Judge? Happy is that man who can say, “I have committed all to Christ—my body, soul, and spirit—all my powers and all my affections. I have committed all to Him by faith and prayer, so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly for it is all right even now.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Our Chief Business

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Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live. – Isaiah 38:1

We are to set our house in order, that is, our own house. Some persons are very busy setting other people’s houses in order and oh, how fast their tongues will go when they are sweeping out their neighbor’s kitchen or dusting out his cupboard! Set your own houses in order, sirs, before you attempt to arrange the affairs of other people. Again, the tenant himself must do it. “Set thine house in order.” You must not leave it to a priest. You must not ask your fellow man to become responsible for you. You must make personal application to Him who can set all in order for you, even to Him who came into the world and died for this very purpose. If you need oil for your lamps, you must go to them that sell and buy for yourselves, for your fellow virgins can give you none of their oil. Set your own house in order. This is the chief business of every living man as a tenant under God…What kind of order is my house to be set in? My conscience will help to tell me that. An enlightened conscience tells us in what kind of order our heart, our family, and our business should be. By its teachings, we may learn how all the departments of the house should be ordered. It cannot be right that the body should be master over the soul—conscience tells us that…Conscience says that the heart is never right till the whole man is in Christ—till, by a living faith, we have embraced Jesus as our full salvation and have received the Holy Spirit as our Sanctifier. We are never right till we are right with conscience, and conscience tells us that we are never right till we are right with God. “Set thine house in order.” Obey the inward monitor, listen to the still small voice, and prepare to meet your God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Willing Slaves

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, the unbelieving life 1 Comment

You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. – Romans 6:16

I am often amazed in my soul at what men will do for that black master, the devil. Why, sirs, the devil will sometimes summon men to one of his conventicles at the street corner, where the gas is flaming, and they will cheerfully obey the summons…These willing slaves drink at their master’s bidding, though the cup makes their brain reel, sets their heart on flame, and makes them unable to keep their feet. Yes, and when he still cries, “Drink, yea, drink abundantly,” these faithful servants swallow down the poison till they lie down like logs, or roar like demons. They will keep putting the cup of death to their lips, till delirium tremens comes upon them and possesses them as with hell itself. Thousands obediently render homage to Satan by drinking away their lives and ruining their souls. How much further they go in serving their master than we do in following ours! Yes, Satan is marvelously well-obeyed by his servants. His rent is regularly paid, and yet he is not the rightful owner, and has no title to the house of manhood. Yes, men will even run after him to offer their homage. They will throw down their lives before his juggernaut car of profligacy and cast themselves beneath its wheels, while the golden chariot of Christ, paved with love for men, traverses their streets, and they have not a word of acclamation or of praise for that Prince of Peace. O come, you servants of Jesus, and be ashamed of this! Come and render to your Lord your full service. Throw your hearts’ enthusiasm into your religion. Be at least as earnest for God as others are for the devil. Be at least as self-denying and self-sacrificing as they are who run the mad career of sin. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Our Great Landlord

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Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits, the God of our salvation! Selah – Psalm 68:19

There is this clause in the lease, which I am afraid some have never observed, namely, that the Landlord has at all times the right of ingress and egress over His own property. I thank God that some of us have yielded to the Lord this right, and now our prayer often is that He would come into our house, and search us, and try us, and know our ways, and see if there be any evil way in us, and lead us in the way everlasting. Time was when the last thing we wished for was the presence of God, when we said to Him, “Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.” But now, being renewed by His Spirit, we say to Him, “Abide with us.” Beloved friend, are you always ready to open the door of your heart to God’s inspection? Do you delight in heavenly communion? Do you constantly invite the Lord Jesus to come in and sup with you, and you with Him? If not, you are forgetting one great clause in your lease, and let me also say, you are forgetting the greatest privilege that men can enjoy beneath the stars. It is well for me to recall to your memories that, according to our tenure, our great Landlord permits us to call upon Him to execute all repairs. Our circumstances are apt to grow straitened, and He it is who gives us power to get wealth, He daily loads us with benefits. When our bodily tabernacle is shaken, He it is who heals all our diseases. When our sorrows and wants multiply, He it is who satisfies our mouth with good things, so that our youth is renewed like the eagle’s…Jesus is the beloved Physician. If we had more faith in God and resorted more often to Him by prayer and faith, the prescriptions of the medical man might be more often wise, and his medicines more frequently useful. The Lord, who made our house, best knows how to repair the tenement and He permits us to resort to Him. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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There Must Be Some Rent to Pay

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…let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. – Hebrews 13:15

We occupy a house which is evidently not our own and therefore there must be some rent to pay. What is it? The rent that God asks of His tenants is that they should praise Him as long as they live. “Oh!” say you, “that is but little.” I grant you that it is. It is but a peppercorn, a mere acknowledgment, but yet there are millions who never pay even that. They offer the Lord no thanks, no love, no service. For the benefits they receive, they make no return, or rather, they make an evil recompense. The breath that He gives them is never turned to song. The food they eat is not sanctified with gratitude. The goods that He bestows are not tithed, nor are the first fruits of their increase offered to the Lord. Their hearts do not love Him. Their faith does not trust in His dear Son—their lips do not speak of Him and magnify His glorious name. This is most unrighteous and ungenerous. For us to praise God is not a costly or painful business. The heart that praises God finds a sweet return in the exercise itself. In heaven, it is the heaven of perfect spirits to praise the Lord. And on earth, we are nearest heaven when we are fullest of the praises of JEHOVAH. But how ungrateful are those who are tenants in God’s house and yet refuse the little tribute which He asks of them! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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Where Will Our Immortal Natures Be?

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Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live. – Isaiah 38:1

Set your house in order, for your great Landlord may serve an ejectment notice upon you, and there will be no hope of resisting it, though the wisest of physicians should seek to bar the door…We cling with dreadful tenacity to this poor life and the little which we foolishly call our all. It were well if we could cling with such fast hold to the life that is to come, for that alone is worth clinging to, since it is forever—whereas this life is to be but for a little time even at the longest. What a reflection it is that within a hundred years, every one in our most crowded audiences (unless the Lord shall come), will be soundly sleeping amid the clods of the valley—and not one of all the present armies of men that populate our cities will be in possession of his house and lands, or will know aught of anything that is done under the sun! We shall have gone over to “the great majority.” We shall be, perhaps, remembered, perhaps forgotten, but at any rate, we ourselves shall mingle no more with our fellows in the mart, the street, the places of worship, or the haunts of pleasure. We shall depart from sea and land, from city and village, from earth and all that is thereon.

Where will our immortal natures be? Where will our spirits be? Shall we be communing among the blessed harpers whose every note is bliss, or shall we be forever gnashing our teeth in remorse among the castaways who would not receive the mercy of God? We hold our house, then, on no firmer tenure than from moment to moment. Remember this, you dwellers in these houses of clay! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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