Character of Jesus

God Judges and God Knows

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

He shall judge Thy people with righteousness, and Thy poor with judgment. – Psalm 72:2

Kindly look at the second verse. “He shall judge Thy people with righteousness, and Thy poor with judgment;” so that one of the special blessings for God’s poor is that they shall be judged with judgment. Alas! they are often judged with harshness; or they are judged in ignorance; or they are judged by malice-not judged by righteousness, nor by judgment…Slander is very busy with the children of God. God had a Son that had no fault; but He never had a son that was not found fault with. Ay, God Himself was slandered in paradise by Satan: let us not expect, therefore, to escape from the venomous tongue.

One blessing, however, that will always come to God’s needy ones is this-Christ will right them, He will judge them with judgment. Are you harshly spoken of at home? Don’t be angry, don’t provoke in return, don’t answer railing with railing. “He shall judge His poor with righteousness.” Leave it to Him. Wait, wait, till the judgment sits, for who are these that they should judge you? Their opinion, though it is bitter as gall to your spirit, does not really affect your character or your destiny. If you are right before the Lord, through faith in Christ, they cannot make you wrong by anything they say. God judges and God knows…Bide your time you that are one of a family and alone. Or, if for Christ’s sake you have been despised, have courage and let not your spirit be bowed down. “Rejoice ye in this day and leap for joy, for so persecuted they the prophets that were before you.” The King will speedily come, and when He cometh then will this word be verified. “He shall judge His people with righteousness and His poor with judgment.” There is one mercy for you-to have your wrongs righted and your character cleared. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

It Is All of the Grace of God

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

Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up. – James 4:10

In choosing to bless the poor and needy by His grace, the Lord finds for Himself warm friends, those who will give Him much praise, contend earnestly for His reign and for His sovereignty, and endure much obloquy for very love to His dear name. Why if the Lord were to save the Pharisees, they would hardly say, “thank you,” they are so good themselves. They reckon themselves to be so excellent, that if they had salvation they would take it as a matter of course, and, like the lepers, they would never return to thank Him that healed them. But when the Lord saves a great sinner, a man that feels there is nothing good in him; oh, how that man talks of it and tells it to others. He cannot take any praise to himself, he knows that he had nothing to do with it, that it is all of the grace of God. And, oh, see that man how he will stand up for the doctrines of grace!…They are dear to him as his own life. “What,” says he, “is not God the giver of salvation? Is not salvation all of God, from first to last? I know it is,” saith he…”for unless it is grace from first to last, I am a lost man; and, if I be indeed a child of God, then can I contend for the doctrines of grace, and will do till I die.”

Dear objects of Almighty love, He finds you on the dunghill, but He lifts you from it. He finds you in the dust, but is not this the song of Hannah and the song of Mary too-“He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and He hath exalted them of low degree: He hath filled the hungry with good things, but the rich He hath sent empty away?” It is God’s way of dealing with the poor and lost; rejoice at it, it is full of encouragement to you. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

Wise Mercy Seeks Out Chief Misery

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

But He giveth more grace. Wherefore He saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. – James 4:6

We see in the poor, and the needy, and the helpless, a reason for God’s grace. They are the persons who are most willing to accept it, for they are the persons who most require it. Your generosity will not stand to be dictated to, but, at the same time, you usually prefer to give to those who want most. Wise mercy seeks out chief misery, and God therefore delights to give His blessings to those who need them most, not to those who fancy they deserve them-they shall have none of them, but those who need them, they shall have all of them.

When a soul is made to feel its own poverty, it does not set itself up in rivalry with Christ; it does not pretend to be able to help itself; it has no disputing about the terms of the gospel. A sinner, when he is thoroughly famished, has such an appetite that he eats such things as God’s mercy sets before him, and he raises no question. A proud Pharisee will say, “I will not submit to this, to be saved by faith alone-I will not have it. To accept mercy as the absolute gift of heaven, irrespective of my character, I cannot endure it.” The high soul of a Pharisee, I say, kicks at it. But when God has brought a man low, till like the publican he cries, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” he is glad to be saved in God’s way, and no matter however humbling the plan of grace, nor how the sinner is debased and Christ exalted, the poor sinner loves to have it so. It is a way suitable to his own wants, a way which he accepts for the very reason that God has adapted it to his position. Hence, if there be reasons they lie here, not in man’s merit but on the Lord’s mercy. The fact that bare misery, when touched and guided by the Spirit of God, makes the soul to open its mouth like the hard chapped soil to drink in the rain, as soon as the rain descends from above, is an argument why grace so commonly flows in this course. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

When the Chariot of the Eternal Comes

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

“In Me ye shall have peace.” -John 16:33

For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. -Psalm 72:12

The trials of God’s servants are sometimes extremely severe. Not a few are literally as well as spiritually poor. Hunger, privation, and embarrassment haunt their steps. And when you once come to be poor, how often does it happen that you have no helper. In the summer of prosperity your friends and acquaintances are numerous as the leaves of the forest, but in the winter of your losses and distresses, your friends are few indeed; your neighbors stand aloof, your old mates desert you, for like the wind your trials have borne them all away as sere leaves, and you cannot find them.

But, do not think that the Lord has cast you off, because He is thus chastening you with the rod of men; take it as an exercise of your faith, and go to Him and plead this promise, “He shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper.”

When the chariot of the Eternal comes from above, He bids it roll far downward from the skies; He passes by the towers of haughty kings; He leaves the palaces of princes and the halls of senates, and down to the hovels of cottagers the chariot of His grace descends, for there He sees with joy and delight the objects of His everlasting love. “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion,” is the word of divine sovereignty, and God makes it true by taking the poor and the needy, and them that have no helper. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

The Path of Sorrow

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation 1 Comment

…In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. – John 16:33

When a Christian is richest in grace he is poorest in himself. The way to grow rich in grace is to feel your poverty. Whenever you think you have stored up a little strength, a little comfort, a little provision against a rainy day, you are pretty sure to have the trouble you bargained for, and to miss the resources you counted on. Estimate your true wealth before God by your entire dependence on Him. The more you have, the less you have, and the less you have, the more you have. When you have nothing at all in yourself, then Christ is all in all to you. The perpetual condition of every child of God in himself is that of a needy and a poor and a helpless one-on the high mountains with his Lord, rejoicing in His love, yet is he even there in himself less than nothing and vanity-still poor and needy.

There have been times when we felt this very powerfully, perhaps, very painfully. Has Satan ever beset you, my brethren, with his fierce temptations? No doubt many of you have had to feel the ferocity of his attacks. Perhaps, blasphemous thoughts have been injected into your mind-dark forebodings, such as these, “God has forsaken me.” Perhaps, he has said, “He has sinned himself out of the covenant-he is a castaway,” and your poor little faith has tried to hold on to Christ, but it seemed as if she must be driven from her hold. While others found it as you thought easy to get to heaven, you realised the truth of the text-“The righteous scarcely are saved.” You have had to fight for every inch of ground, and it seemed to you often as though you had not a spark of grace in you, not a ray of hope, and not so much as a single grain of the grace of God within your heart. Ah! and at such times you have been poor and needy, and you have had no helper. And, perhaps, at such seasons, too, temporal trouble may have come in. Whoever may go through the world without trouble, but God’s people never do.

“The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the place where sorrow is unknown.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

He Will Become Our Helper and Our Salvation.

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

He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. -Psalm 72:13

We are very needy and very poor, though we did not always think so. When the discovery was first made to us, we felt the smart as those do “who have seen better days.” Once we fancied ourselves able to do our work and sure to get our wages; we did hope to merit a reward for our good conduct; and we thought it was only for us to add a little piety to our decent morals in order to be well pleasing to God and our own conscience. Ah, sirs! when we woke from these foolish dreams, and faced our own abject poverty, how ashamed we were; how we shunned the light; how we sat alone and avoided company; how fear preyed on our heart; with what anguish we chattered to ourselves, saying, “What shall I do? What shall I do?” Poor indeed we are and we know it.

Our eyes are up towards the hills whence cometh our help, and as to all earthly things, we see no help in them. “Cursed is he that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm.” “He shall be like the heath in the desert-he shall not see when good cometh.”The Lord grant us all to be reduced to this-that we have no helper, because when we have no helper here, He will become our helper and our salvation.  ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm

We Are Needy

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

For He shall deliver the needy when he crieth…He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. – Psalm 72:12,13

We are never a moment without need. We wake up, and our first glance might reveal our needs to us, and when we fall asleep it is upon a poor man’s pillow, for we need that God should preserve us through the night. We have needs when we are on our knees, else where would be the energy of our prayers? We have needs when we try to sing, else how should our uncircumcised lips praise Him aright? We have needs when we are relieving the needs of others, lest we become proud of our alms giving. We have need in preaching, need in hearing; we have need in working, need in suffering, need in resting. What is our life but one long need? All men are full of needs. But God’s peculiar people feel this need-they not only confess it is so, but they know it experimentally. They are full of needs. Once they thought that they were rich and increased in goods, and had need of nothing, but now, through the enlightenment of God’s Spirit, they feel themselves to be naked, and poor, and miserable. Their needs were great before, but they appear now to be incalculable, more in number than the hairs of their heads. They have need of a covering for the sin of the past; they have need of help against the temptation of the present; they have need of perseverance as to the entire future. If there are any people under heaven who could claim the title of “needy,” above all others, it is not the pauper in the workhouse, nor the mendicant who asks alms in the streets, but it is the child of God, for he feels himself to be so dependent that the more he gets from his great Benefactor the more he requires, and the more he must have to satisfy the enlarged desires of a heart that begins to know the will of God concerning us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1037.cfm