Character of Jesus

That Fatal “Tomorrow”

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

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me. – John 14:6

You want the truth, and you will never be received by God at last unless you bring the truth in your right hand. Only the truthful can enter those gates of pearl. You want the truth now. You are not fit to live any more than to die without an interest in the truth as it is in Jesus. Accept Christ to be truly yours, so truly yours as to make you true. You know not how to fight the battle of life at all without the truth. Your life will be a blunder, and the close of it will be a disaster, except you buy the truth. God grant that you may buy the truth now. You need it. You need it now, and you will for ever need it. Oh! I would to God that that hymn we sang should not merely be heard by you, but felt by you:

“Hasten, sinner, to be wise,
And stay not for the morrow’s sun.”

Oh! that fatal “tomorrow”! Over the cliffs of “tomorrow” millions have fallen to their ruin. Tomorrow, ay, tomorrow! Here are these put-offs, and these delays, and yet God has never given you a promise of mercy tomorrow. His word is “Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” A better day shall never come than this day. Oh! that you would accept it now.

“If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3449.cfm

The Whole Pearl

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

Buy the truth. – Proverbs 23:23

Then I say, buy only the truth. Do not be throwing away your life, and your abilities, and your zeal, and your earnestness, for a lie. Some are doing it… Multitudes of sermons are preached, very zealously, to propagate falsehoods, and sea and land are compassed to make proselytes, who shall be ten times more children of hell than they were before. Buy only the truth. Do not buy the glittering stuff they call truth. Never mind the label; look to see if it be truth. Bring everything that is propounded as truth to the test, to the trial. If it will not stand the fire of God’s Word, then do not buy it; nay, do not have it as a gift; nay, do not keep it in the house. Run away from it. It doth eat as doth a canker; let it not come near you. Buy only the truth.

“Buy the truth” at any price, and sell it at no price. If you lose your body for it, if you lose not your soul, you have made a good bargain. If you lose your estate for it, yet if you have heaven in return, how blessed the exchange! You certainly will not need for it to lose your peace of mind, but you may lose everything else, and you shall make a good bargain. Come to no terms with Christ. Throw all into the soul-bargain. Let all go, as long as you may but have truth in the doctrine, truth in the heart, and truth in the life, and Christ, who is the Truth, to be your treasure for ever.

Buy all the truth. When you come to the Bible, do not pick and choose. Do not try to believe half of it, and leave out the other half. Buy the truth-that is, not a section of it that suits your particular idiosyncrasy, but buy the whole. Why need you break up pearls and dissolve them? Buy all that is true. One doctrine of God’s Word balances another. He who is altogether and only a Calvinist probably only knows half the truth, but he who is willing to take the other side, as far as it is true, and to believe all he finds in the Word, will get the whole pearl. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3449.cfm

Christ’s Price

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

Buy the truth, and sell it not… buy wine and milk without money and without price. – Proverbs 23:23; Isaiah 55:1

“Buy the truth.” Let us correct an error here. Some might suppose that Christ, and the gospel, and salvation-all of which are included in the truth-can be bought. They can, but they cannot. They can in the sense of the text; they cannot in any other sense. You cannot purchase salvation; merit cannot win it. Christ’s price is, “Without money and without price.” Has not the prophet so worded it? “Yea, come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price.” Salvation is of free grace, and is from the very necessity of its nature, gratis. You cannot merit it; you cannot earn it. It is not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of birth, but “He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He will have compassion.”

To be saved, give up everything that must be given up, in order to your receiving the free salvation. Every sin must be given up. No man shall go to heaven while he lives in, and favours any one, sin. A man may sin and be saved, but he cannot love sin and be saved. Give up, then, thy drunkenness, if that be thy sin. Give up, then, thine unchaste living, if that be thy sin. Conquer that angry temper, that love of greed-whatever it is that keeps thee back from Christ. Buy the truth, and give up these. Thou wilt not merit salvation then; but if this must be given up, let it not stand in thy way. Give it up, man! Since thou canst not have thy sin and have Christ too, get a divorce from thy sin and take holiness, and take the Saviour. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3449.cfm

The Battle Within

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 4 Comments
…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. – Philippians 2:12-13

Alas! we see nowadays in many professors a great deal of life without struggle, and I think I have learned that all spiritual life that is not attended with struggles is a mistake, for Isaac, the child of the promise, is sure to be mocked by Ishmael. No sooner does the seed of the woman come into the world than the seed of the serpent tries to destroy it. You must, and will, find a battle going on within you if you are a believer. Sin will contest it with grace, and grace will seek to reign over sinful corruptions. Be afraid of too easy an experience. “Moab is at ease from his youth; he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel; for the time cometh when the Lord will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled upon their lees.” There must be strivings within, or we may well beware of such an experience. And I think I have noticed a growing feeling abroad of confidence without self-examination. I would have you hold to believe God’s Word, but do not take your own state at haphazard. Do not conclude that you are a Christian because you thought you were ten years ago. Day by day bring yourself to the touchstone. He that cannot bear examination will have to bear condemnation. He that dare not search himself will find that God will search him. He that is afraid to look himself in the face has need to be afraid to look the Judge in the face when the great white throne shall be placed, and all the world summoned to judgment. Confidence is quite consistent with self-examination, and I pray you in this thing buy the truth, and seek to have a religion that will bear the test-a true faith, a living faith, a faith that moves your soul, a deep-rooted faith, a faith which is the supernatural work of the Holy Ghost, for the time cometh when, as the Lord liveth, nothing short of this will stand you in good stead.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3449.cfm

Only One True New Birth

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 5 Comments

Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. – Luke 3:8

How easy it is to be deceived with the notion that we are converted when we still need to be converted; to fancy that, because we have the approbation of our minister and of our Christian friends, we must, therefore, necessarily be the people of God. There is only one true new birth, but there are fifty counterfeits of it. In this respect, then, buy the truth. Let me have you beware of an experience which has a faith in it that was never attended with repentance. I am afraid of a dry-eyed faith. That faith seems to me to be the faith of God’s elect, whose eyes are full of tears. If thou hast never felt thyself a sinner, never trembled under the law of God, never felt that thou hast deserved to be cast into hell, I am afraid thy faith is a mere presumption, and not the faith that looks to Christ. Beware of an experience that lies in talk, and not in feeling. Mr. Talkative, in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress could speak very glibly about religion; no man more so than he; he was fit to take the chair in an assembly of divines; but it was not heart-work; it was all surface-work. Plough deep, my brethren. Feel what you believe. Let it be with you real homework, soul-work, the work of God the Holy Ghost-not a temporary excitement, not head-knowledge, not theory. May the truth be burned into your souls by the operation of the Holy Ghost. In this respect, buy the truth. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3449.cfm

Keep to the Truth

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Father 5 Comments

Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. – 2 John 1:9

Alas! we have, in some quarters, too much of faith trusted in which is not practical. Men say they believe, but they do not prove it by their lives. They remain in sin, and yet wrap themselves up in the belief that they are God’s chosen ones. From such turn away, and remember that a faith without works is dead, and only the faith that changes the character, sanctifies the life, and leads the man to God, is the faith which will save the soul. We must see to it that in our doctrine we bow our judgment to the teachings of Scripture, and try to be conformed to all the revelation of God, and especially to all the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. Scylla is there and Charybdis is there, and he is a happy helmsman who can steer between the two. You shall fall into this ism or into that, unless you keep to the truth. Never mind whether you can make the truth always consistent to your own judgment or not. If it is the truth, believe it; and though it should seem to contradict another truth, yet hold to it, if it is in the Word, waiting till clearer light shall reveal to you that all these truths stood in a wonderful harmony and consistency which, at first, you could not perceive. In doctrine, buy the truth.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3449.cfm

Truth is Very Precious

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation 11 Comments

Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth. – John 17:17

Holy Scripture is the standard of truth. To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no truth in them. “Thy word is truth.” Here is silver tried in the furnace and purified seven times. Speak of Infallibility? It is not at Rome, but it is here in this Book. Here is an infallible witness to the truth of God, and he that is taught of the Holy Spirit to understand it gets at the truth. Now, dear brethren, do aim to get the right truth, the real truth, as to matters of doctrine. Count it not a trifle to be sound in the faith. Think no error to be harmless, for truth is very precious, and error, even when we do not see it to be so, may lead to the most solemn consequences of mischief. In this world we see too much of salvation without Christ-I mean we meet with many who believe that they are saved because they have been baptized, or confirmed, or passed through the ceremonies of the church to which they belong. They have not looked to the precious blood; they are not depending simply upon the finished work of the Redeemer, but something else than Christ has become their confidence. Now, avoid that, and buy the truth, which lies here, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

Buy the truth in this matter. Stand to it that it is the work of the Holy Spirit in rational and intelligent beings, leading them to hate sin, and to lay hold of eternal life. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3449.cfm