Character of Jesus

I Will Sing to My Beloved a Song!

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

“Now will I sing to my Well-beloved a song of my Beloved.”- Isaiah 5:1

It was a prophet who wrote this, a prophet inspired of God. An ordinary believer might suffice to sing, but he counts it no stoop for a prophet, and no waste of his important time, to occupy himself with song. There is no engagement under heaven that is more exalting than praising God, and however great may be the work which is committed to the charge of any of us, we shall always do well if we pause awhile to spend a time in sacred praise. I would not wish to prefer one spiritual exercise before another, else I think I would endorse the saying of an old divine who said that a line of praise was better than even a leaf of prayer; that praise was the highest, noblest, best, most satisfying, and most healthful occupation in which a Christian man could be found. If these may be regarded as the words of the Church, the Church of old did well to turn all her thoughts in the direction of praising her God. Though the winning of souls be a great thing, though the edifying of believers be an important matter, though the reclamation of backsliders calls for earnest attention, yet never, never, never may we cease from praising and magnifying the name of the Well-beloved. This is to be our occupation in heaven: let us begin the music here, and make a heaven of the Church, even here below.

Oh! I wish I could bid you all say, “I will sing to my Beloved a song!” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

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

In Very Deed and Truth, He Shall Come

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

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen.- Revelation 22:20

Now, brethren, we are to expect, as long as this world lasts, that all things will shake that are to be moved. They will go on shaking. We call the world sometimes “terra firma”; it is not this world, surely, that deserves such a name as that; there is nothing stable beneath the stars; all things else will shake, and as the shaking goes on, Jesus Christ will, to those who know Him, become more and more their desire. I suppose, if the world went on, in some things mending and improving, and were to go up to a point, we should not want Christ to come in a hurry; we would rather that things should be perpetuated; but the shaking will make Christ more and more the desire of the nations…The Church will say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” She will say it with gathering earnestness; she will continue still to say it, though there are intervals in which she will forget her Lord, but still her heart’s desire will be that He will come; and at last He will surely come and bring to this world not only Himself, the desire of all nations, but all that can be desired, for those days of His, when He appeareth, shall be to His people as the days of heaven upon earth, the days of their honour, the days of their rest-the day in which the kingdoms shall belong unto Christ…Here is the great hope of that splendid building, the Church, which is desired. Her glory essentially lies in the Incarnate God, who has come into her midst. Her glory manifestly will lie in the second coming of that Incarnate God, when He shall be revealed from heaven to those that look and are waiting for and hasting unto the coming of the Son of God-looking for Him with gladsome expectation. And this is the joy of the Church…In propria persona-in very deed and truth, He shall come. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3442.cfm

What You Want is Christ

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 6 Comments

Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldst go. – Isaiah 48:17

All the world desires a way to God. Hence men set up priests and anoint them with oil, and smear them with I know not what, only that they may be mediators between them and God. They must have something to come between their guilt and God’s glorious holiness. Oh; if they knew it, what they want is Christ. You want no priest, but the great “Apostle and High Priest of our profession.” You want no mediator with God, but the one Mediator, the man Christ Jesus, who is also equal with God. Oh! world, why wilt thou gad about to seek this priest and that other deceiver, when He whom thou wantest is appointed by the Most High?

Earth wants a peacemaker, and it is He, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, and the friend of Gentiles, the Prince of Peace, who will make war to cease unto the ends of the earth…The fact is, it wants the Maker, who made it, to come in and put it to rights…it wants the Christ of God to turn the stream of His atoning sacrifice right through the whole earth, to sweep away the whole filth of ages, and it never will be done unless He does it. He is the one, the true Reformer, the true rectifier of all wrong, and in this respect the desire of all nations.

Ye, in the dark, are groping after Him, and know not that He is there.~ C.H.Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3442.cfm

The Lord is in the Midst of Her

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

And I will shake all nations..and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts. – Haggai 2:7

“I will shake all nations.” The apostle says that this signifies the things that can be shaken; that the things that cannot be shaken will remain, and that the desire of all nations must be put down as a thing that cannot be shaken. The Church, then, shall never be shaken, and the precious things that the Church gives to her God shall not be shaken. Time will change many things. Great princes will be considered mere beggars by-and-by in the esteem of men who know how to judge by character. Great men will shrivel into very small things-when they come to be tried, even by posterity. And the judgement-day-ah! how will that try the great ones of this earth? But the Christian Church-the very gates of hell shall not prevail against her. Time shall not be able so much as to chip one of her polished stones. Her treasures of faith, and what not, the rich things that God hath given her-these things shall never be stolen: they can never be shaken. And then the crown of all is, “I will fill this house with My glory,” saith the Lord. This is the reason, the great charm of it all. God Himself dwells, as He dwells nowhere else, in His glory…God is known in the Jerusalem below, as well as in the Jerusalem above. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. God is in the midst of her: she shall not be moved; and though the kings gather together for her destruction, yet His presence is the river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God. Yes, glorious things may well be spoken of Zion when we have such stones as precious men, such gifts as precious graces, such abiding character as God gives, and such a presence as the presence of God Himself.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3442.cfm

The Desirable Ones

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 4 Comments

…the desire of all nations shall come… – Haggai 2:7

To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious… -1 Peter 2:4

The choice men, the pick, the best of all men shall come and constitute the true temple of God. Not the kings and princes, not the great and noble after the flesh-these are but the choice of men after the manner of man’s choice; but not many great men after the flesh, not many mighty are chosen and called; but still, those whom God chooses must be the choice ones of mankind. They will not claim to be so by nature; on the contrary, they will repudiate any idea of any natural betterness in themselves. But God sees them as what they are to be, as what He intends them to be, as what He makes them to be, and in this respect they are the desire, they are the choice of all nations. To God, His people are His royal treasure, His secret jewels, the treasury of kings-they are very precious in His sight. Their very death is precious. He keeps record of their bones, and will raise their dust at the last day. If the nation did but know it, the saints in a nation are the aristocracy of that nation. Those who fear God are the very soul, and marrow, and backbone of a nation. For their sakes God has preserved many a nation. For their sakes He gives unnumbered blessings. “Ye are the salt of the earth”: the earth were putrid without them. “Ye are the light of the world”: the world would be dark without them. They are the desire, I say, though often the world treats them with contempt, and would cast them out. It has ever been thus with the blind world-to treat its best friends worst, and its worst enemies often receive the most royal entertainment. Now what a joy it is to us to think that God has been pleased to make unto Himself a people according to His own sovereign will and good pleasure, and that He has made these to be the desirable ones out of all nations-that with these choice and elect ones He will build up His Church. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3442.cfm

The True Spiritual Temple

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

“And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of Hosts.”- Haggai 2:7

The second temple was never intended to be as magnificent as the first. The first was to be the embodiment of the full glory of the dispensation of symbols and types, and was soon to pass away. This comparative feebleness had been proved by the idolatry and apostasy of the people Israel, and when they returned to Jerusalem they were to have a structure that would be sufficient for the purposes of their worship, but they were not again to be indulged with the splendours of the former house which God had erected by the hand of Solomon…The reason seems to me to be this: in the second temple, during the time it should stand, the dispensation of Christ was softly melted into the light of spiritual truth. The outward worship was to cease there. It seems right that it should cease in a temple that had not the external glory of the first. God intended there to light up the first beams of the spiritual splendour of the second temple, namely, His true temple, the Church, and He would put a sign of decay on the outward and visible in the temple of the first. Yet He declares by His servant, Haggai, that the glory of the second temple should be greater than the first. It certainly was not so as in respect of gold, or silver, or size, or excellency of architecture; and yet it truly was so, for the glory of the presence of Christ was greater than all the glory of the old temple’s wealth; and the glory of having the gospel preached in it, the glory of having the gospel miracles wrought in its porches by the apostles and by the Master, was far greater than any hecatombs of bullocks and he-goats-the glory of being, as it were, the cradle of the Christian Church, the nest out of which should fly the messengers of peace, who, like doves, should bear the olive branch throughout the world. I take it that the decadence of the old system of symbols was a most fitting preparation for the incoming of the system of grace and truth in the person of Jesus Christ. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3442.cfm

 

Worship Only Thee

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, repentance, salvation 3 Comments

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. – James 4:8

I have known some who have taken very strange ways of showing their joy. They have been inclined to stand up and shout in the very place where they found the Saviour, while others could only sit still and water the floor with their tears, feeling as if for the next week or two they did not want to look anybody in the face, but just in solemn silence of the mind to revel in the company of their adorable Lord. We do not wonder that some people show a little strange enthusiasm when they first come to know Christ. It is no marvel. When a man has been in prison for months he may well be a little demonstrative in his joy on obtaining his liberty; so when a soul has been under the burden of sin, and bound with its galling chain, he may well leap, as Bunyan tells us his pilgrim did, when the burden was loosed off him and rolled away.

A better way of showing that you have received Christ joyfully is by turning out His enemies. When you receive Christ in at the front door, you must not keep the devil in the back parlour. Every traitor sin must be ejected when the Great King takes up His residence in your heart. The thorough cleansing of your house from every defilement is the smallest tribute we can expect you to pay in deference to your royal guest. The soul that receives Christ joyfully sighs and groans because it cannot make, as it would, a clean sweep of its sin. I know you do not love Christ if you cling to your sins; if you love Christ heartily, you will put away your iniquities:

“The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be;
Help me to tear it from its throne,
And worship only Thee.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3487.cfm