Character of Jesus

The Two Streams Within the Christian

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

…wherein ye greatly rejoice… 1 Peter 1:6

Mariners tell us that there are some parts of the sea where there is a strong current upon the surface going one way, but that down in the depths there is a strong current running the other way. Two seas do not meet and interfere with one another; but one stream of water on the surface is running in one direction, and another below in an opposite direction. Now, the Christian is like that. On the surface there is a stream of heaviness rolling with dark waves; but down in the depths there is a strong under-current of great rejoicing that is always flowing there. Do you ask me what is the cause of this great rejoicing? The apostle tells us, “Wherein ye greatly rejoice.” What does he mean? You must refer to his own writings, and then you will see. He is writing “to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus,” and so forth. The first thing that he say’s to them is, that they are “elect according to the foreknowledge of God;” “wherein we greatly rejoice.” Ah! even when the Christian is most “in heaviness through manifold temptations,” what a mercy it is that he can know that he is still elect of God! Any man who is assured that God has “chosen him from before the foundation of the world,” may well say, “Wherein we greatly rejoice.” Let me be lying upon a bed of sickness, and just revel in that one thought. Before God made the heavens and the earth, and laid the pillars of the firmament in their golden sockets, He set His love upon me; upon the breast of the great high priest He wrote my name, and in Hs everlasting book it stands, never to be erased-“elect according to the foreknowledge of God.” Why, this may make a man’s soul leap within him, and all the heaviness that the infirmities of the flesh may lay upon him shall be but as nothing; for this tremendous current of his overflowing joy shall sweep away the mill-dam of his grief. Bursting and overleaping every obstacle, it shall overflood all his sorrows till they are drowned and covered up and shall not be mentioned any more for ever. “Wherein we greatly rejoice.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

Learning to be of Comfort for Others

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God 5 Comments

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials… – 1 Peter 1:6

Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. – 2 Corinthians 1:4

This heaviness is of essential use to a Christian, if he would do good to others. Ah! there are a great many Christian people that I was going to say I should like to see afflicted-but I will not say so much as that; I should like to see them heavy in spirit; if it were the Lord’s will that they should be bowed down greatly, I would not express a word of regret; for a little more sympathy would do them good; a little more power to sympathize would be a precious boon to them, and even if it were purchased by a short journey through a burning, fiery furnace, they might not rue the day afterwards in which they had been called to pass through the flame. There are none so tender as those who have been skinned themselves. Those who have been in the chamber of affliction know how to comfort those who are there. Do not believe that any man will become a physician unless he walks the hospitals; and I am sure that no one will become a divine, or become a comforter, unless he lies in the hospital as well as walks through it, and has to suffer himself. God cannot make ministers-and I speak with reverence of His Holy Name-He cannot make a Barnabas except in the fire. It is there, and there alone, that He can make His sons of consolation; He may make His sons of thunder anywhere; but His sons of consolation He must make in the fire, and there alone. Who shall speak to those whose hearts are broken, who shall bind up their wounds, but those whose hearts have been broken also, and whose wounds have long run with the sore of grief? “If need be,” then, “ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.” …I must add it is but for a season. A little time, a few hours, a few days, a few months at most, it shall all have passed away; and then comes the “eternal weight of glory, wherein ye greatly rejoice.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

God Has Beauties

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

My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen Thou me according unto Thy word. – Psalm 119:28

If the Christian did not sometimes suffer heaviness he would begin to grow too proud, and think too much of himself, and become too great in his own esteem. Those of us who are of elastic spirit, and who in our health are full of everything that can make life happy, are too apt to forget the Most High God. Lest we should be satisfied from ourselves, and forget that all our own springs must be in Him, the Lord sometimes seems to sap the springs of life, to drain the heart of all its spirits, and to leave us without soul or strength for mirth, so that the noise of tabret and of viol would be unto us as but the funeral dirge, without joy or gladness. Then it is that we discover what we are made of, and out of the depths we cry unto God, humbled by our adversities…in heaviness we often learn lessons that we never could attain elsewhere. Do you know that God has beauties for every part of the world; and He has beauties for every place of experience? There are views to be seen from the tops of the Alps that you can never see elsewhere. Ay, but there are beauties to be seen in the depths of the dell that ye could never see on the tops of the mountains; there are glories to be seen on Pisgah, wondrous sights to be beheld when by faith we stand on Tabor; but there are also beauties to be seen in our Gethsemanes, and some marvellously sweet flowers are to be culled by the edge of the dens of the leopards. Men will never become great in divinity until they become great in suffering. “Ah!” said Luther, “affliction is the best book in my library;” and let me add, the best leaf in the book of affliction is that blackest of all the leaves, the leaf called heaviness, when the spirit sinks within us, and we cannot endure as we could wish. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

Like Our Head

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

…ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations… -1 Peter 1:6

It is a rule of the kingdom that all the members must be like the Head. They are to be like the Head in that day when He shall appear. “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” But we must be like the Head also in His humiliation, or else we cannot be like Him in His glory. Now, you will observe that our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ very often passed through much of trouble, without any heaviness. When He said, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head,” I observe no heaviness. I do not think He sighed over that. And when athirst He sat upon the well, and said, “Give Me to drink,” there was no heaviness in all His thirst. I believe that through the first years of His ministry, although He might have suffered some heaviness, He usually passed over His troubles like a ship floating over the waves of the sea. But you will remember that at last the waves of swelling grief came into the vessel; at last the Saviour Himself, though full of patience, was obliged to say “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;” and one of the evangelists tells us that the Saviour “began to be very heavy.”…He had no longer His wonted courage, and though He had strength to say, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thine be done;” still the weakness did prevail, when He said, “If it be possible let this cup pass from Me.” The Saviour passed through the brook, but He “drank of the brook by the way;” and we who pass through the brook of suffering must drink of it too. He had to bear the burden, not with His shoulders omnipotent, but with shoulders that were bending to the earth beneath a load. And you and I must not always expect a giant faith that can remove mountains: sometimes even to us the grasshopper must be a burden, that we may in all things be like unto our Head.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

 

If Need Be

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

…though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.- 1Peter 1:6

“Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness.” It does not say, “Though now for a season ye are suffering pain, though now for a season you are poor; but you are ‘in heaviness;'” your spirits are taken away from you; you are made to weep; you cannot bear your pain; you are brought to the very dust of death, and wish that you might die. Your faith itself seems as if it would fail you. That is the thing for which there is a needs be. That is what my text declares, that there is an absolute needs be that sometimes the Christian should not endure his sufferings with a gallant and a joyous heart; there is a needs be that sometimes his spirits should sink within him, and that he should become even as a little child smitten beneath the hand of God. Ah! beloved, we sometimes talk about the rod, but it is one thing to see the rod, and it is another thing to feel it; and many a time have we said within ourselves, “If I did not feel so low spirited as I now do, I should not mind this affliction;” and what is that but saying, “If I did not feel the rod I should not mind it?” It is just how you feel, that is, after all, the pith and marrow of your affliction. It is that breaking down of the spirit, that pulling down of the strong man, that is the very fester of the soreness of God’s scourging- “the blueness of the wound, whereby the soul is made better.” I think this one idea has been enough to be food for me many a day; and there may be some child of God here to whom it may bring some slight portion of comfort. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

 

A Paradox

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

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.- 1Peter 1:6

This verse to a worldly man looks amazingly like a contradiction; and even to a Christian man, when he understands it best, it will still be a paradox. “Ye greatly rejoice,” and yet “ye are in heaviness.” Is that possible? Can there be in the same heart great rejoicing, and yet a temporary heaviness? Most assuredly. This paradox has been known and felt by many of the Lord’s children, and it is far from being the greatest paradox of the Christian life. Men who live within themselves, and mark their own feelings as Christians, will often stand and wonder at themselves. Of all riddles, the greatest riddle is a Christian man. As to his pedigree, what a riddle he is! He is a child of the first Adam, “an heir of wrath, even as others.” He is a child of the second Adam: he was born free; there is therefore now no condemnation unto him. He is a riddle in his own existence. “As dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not killed.” He is a riddle as to the component parts of his own spiritual frame. He finds that which makes him akin to the devil- depravity, corruption, binding him still to the earth, and causing him to cry out, “O wretched man that I am;” and yet he finds that he has within himself that which exalts him, not merely to the rank of an angel, but higher still-a something which raises him up together, and makes him “sit together with Christ Jesus in heavenly places.” He finds that he has that within him which must ripen into heaven, and yet that about him which would inevitably ripen into hell, if grace did not forbid. What wonder, then, beloved, if the Christian man be a paradox himself, that his condition should be a paradox too? Why marvel ye, when ye see a creature corrupt and yet purified, mortal and yet immortal, fallen but yet exalted far above principalities and powers-why marvel ye, that ye should find that creature also possessed of mingled experience, greatly rejoicing, and yet at the same time, “in heaviness through manifold temptations.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0222.cfm

A Drowned Debtor to the Mercy of God

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

Praise ye the LORD. O give thanks unto the LORD; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever. – Psalm 106:1

I would be very earnest in the next minute or two to stir up my brethren here to sing to their Well-beloved a song, because I am quite sure the exercise will be most fitting and most beneficial. I will speak only for myself, but I will say this-if I did not praise and bless Christ my Lord, I should deserve to have my tongue torn out by its roots from my mouth, and I will add: if I did not bless and magnify His name, I should deserve that every stone I tread on in the streets should rise up to curse my ingratitude, for I am a drowned debtor to the mercy of God-over head and ears-to infinite love and boundless compassion am I a debtor. Are you not the same? Then I charge you by the love of Christ, awake, awake your hearts now to magnify His glorious name. It will do you much good, my brethren. There is, perhaps, no exercise that, on the whole, strengthens us so much as praising God. Sometimes, even when prayer fails, praise will do it. It seems to gird up the loins; it pours a holy anointing oil upon the head and upon the spirit; it gives us a joy of the Lord which is always our strength. Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a dull frame, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise. The song, though at first it be a drag, will by and by come to be wings to lift the spirit with it. Oh! sing more, my brethren, and you will sing more still, for the more you sing the more you will be able to sing the praises of God. It will glorify God; it will comfort yourself; it will also prove an attraction to those who are lingering around the churches. The melancholy of some Christians tends to repel seekers, but the holy joy of others tends to attract them. More flies will always be caught with honey than with vinegar, and more souls will be brought to Christ by your cheerfulness than by your moroseness, more by your consecrated joy than by your selfish dolour. God grant us to sing the praises of God with heart and life until we sing them in heaven ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3476.cfm