Character of Jesus

The Guilt of Sin is Gone

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

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. -Romans 4:8 

Is not the power and dominion of sin broken in you? Do you not feel that you cannot sin because you are born of God? Some sins which were masters of you once, do not trouble you now. I have known a man guilty of profane swearing, and from the moment of his conversion he has never had any difficulty in the matter. We have known a man snatched from drunkenness, and the cure by divine grace has been very wonderful and complete. We have known persons delivered from unclean living, and they have at once become chaste and pure, because Christ has smitten the old dragon such blows that he could not have power over them in that respect. The chosen seed sin and mourn it, but they are not slaves to sin; their heart goeth not after it; they have to say sometimes “the thing I do,” but they are wretched when it is so. They consent with their heart to the law of God that it is good, and they sigh and cry that they may be helped to obey it, for they are no longer under the slavery of sin; the serpent’s reigning power and dominion is broken in them.

It is broken in this way, that the guilt of sin is gone. The great power of the serpent lies in unpardoned sin. He cries “l have made you guilty: I brought you under the curse.” “No,” say we, “we are delivered from the curse and are now blessed, for it is written, ‘Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.’ We are no longer guilty, for who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? Since Christ hath justified, who is he that condemneth?” Here is a swinging blow for the old dragon’s head, such as he never will recover. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm

It Is God’s Wisdom

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

“See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven.”- Hebrews 12:25

It does not say, “Refuse not Him that speaketh,” but “See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh”-that is, “be very circumspect that by no means, accidental or otherwise, you do refuse the Christ of God, who now in the gospel speaks to you. Be watchful, be earnest, lest even through inadvertence ye should refuse the prophet of the gospel dispensation-Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who speaks in the gospel from heaven to the sons of men.” It means, “Give earnest heed and careful attention, that by no means, and in no way you refuse Him that speaketh.”…That which Jesus speaks concerns your soul, concerns your everlasting destiny; it is God’s wisdom; God’s way of mercy; God’s plan by which you may be saved. If this were a secondary matter, ye need not be so earnest about receiving it, but of all things under heaven, nothing so concerns you as the gospel. See, then, that ye refuse not this precious Word, more precious than gold or rubies-which alone can save your souls.

Oh! sirs, ye are fallen through your first father, Adam, and the tendencies now of your souls are towards evil, and not towards the right, and when the Lord comes from heaven to you, you will reject Him if left to yourselves. Watch, then, I say; see that ye refuse not, stir up your souls, awaken your minds, lest this delirious tendency of sin should make you angry with your best friend, and constrain you to thrust from you that which is your only hope for the hereafter. When a man knows that he has a bad tendency which may injure him, if he be wise he watches against it. So, knowing this, which God’s Word tells you, watch, I pray you, lest ye refuse Him that speaketh. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3492.cfm

The Bruising of Your Heel

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman… -Genesis 3:15

Do you recollect how you were led to see the bruising of Christ’s heel and to stand in wonder and observe what the enmity of the serpent had wrought in Him? Did you not begin to feel the bruised heel yourself? Did not sin torment you? Did not the very thought of it vex you? Did not your own heart become a plague to you? Did not Satan begin to tempt you? Did he not inject blasphemous thoughts, and urge you on to desperate measures; did he not teach you to doubt the existence of God, and the mercy of God, and the possibility of your salvation, and so on? This was his nibbling at your heel. He is at his old tricks still…

Did not your worldly friends begin to annoy you? Did they not give you the cold shoulder because they saw something about you so strange and foreign to their tastes? Did they not impute your conduct to fanaticism, pride, obstinacy, bigotry, and the like? Ah, this persecution is the serpent’s seed beginning to discover the woman’s Seed, and to carry on the old war. What does Paul say? “But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.” True godliness is an unnatural and strange thing to them and they cannot away with it Though there are no stakes in Smithfield, nor racks in the Tower, yet the enmity of the human heart towards Christ and His Seed is just the same, and very often shows itself in “trials of cruel mockings” which to the tender hearts are very hard to bear. Well, this is your heel being bruised in sympathy with the bruising of the heel of the glorious Seed of the woman. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm

The New Birth’s New Nature

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

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. -John 1:13

Now, brothers and sisters, we were by nature, as many of us as have been saved, the heirs of wrath even as others. It does not matter how godly our parents were, the first birth brought us no spiritual life, for the promise is not to them which are born of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but only to those who are born of God, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”; you cannot make anything else and there it abides, and the flesh, or carnal mind, abideth in death; “it is not reconciled to God, neither indeed can be.” He who is born into this world but once, and knows nothing of the new birth, must place himself among the seed of the serpent, for only by regeneration can we know ourselves to be the true seed. How does God deal with us who are His called and chosen ones? He means to save us, and how does He work to that end? …He comes to us in mercy. That is the very first work of grace. There was peace between us and Satan once; when he tempted we yielded; whatever he taught us we believed; we were his willing slaves. But perhaps you, my brethren, can recollect when first of all you began to feel uneasy and dissatisfied; the world’s pleasures no longer pleased you; all the juice seemed to have been taken out of the apple, and you had nothing at all. Then you suddenly perceived that you were living in sin, and you were miserable about it, and though you could not get rid of sin yet you hated it, and sighed over it, and cried, and groaned…The Lord, in infinite mercy, dropped the divine life into your soul…Ah, then you saw how sin could be overthrown, did you not? As soon as your heart understood Christ then you saw that what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, Christ was able to accomplish, and that the power of sin and Satan under which you had been in bondage, and which you now loathed, could and would be broken and destroyed because Christ had come into the world to overcome it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm

 

 

Glory Be to Christ! For Satan is Foiled!

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

…He shall bruise thy head… -Genesis 3:15

Though Satan is not dead, my brethren, I was about to say, would God he were, and though he is not converted, and never will be, nor will the malice of his heart ever be driven from him, yet Christ has so far broken his head that he has missed his mark altogether. He intended to make the human race the captives of his power, but they are redeemed from his iron yoke. God has delivered many of them, and the day shall come when He will cleanse the whole earth from the serpent’s slimy trail, so that the entire world shall be full of the praises of God. He thought that this world would be the arena of his victory over God and good, instead of which it is already the grandest theatre of divine wisdom, love, grace, and power. Even heaven itself is not so resplendent with mercy as the earth is, for here it is the Saviour poured out His blood, which cannot be said even of the courts of paradise above. Moreover he thought, no doubt, that when he had led our race astray and brought death upon them, he had effectually marred the Lord’s work. He rejoiced that they would all pass under the cold seal of death, and that their bodies would rot in the sepulchre. Had he not spoiled the handiwork of his great Lord? God may make man as a curious creature with intertwisted veins and blood and nerves, and sinews and muscles, and He may put into his nostrils the breath of life; but, “Ah,” saith Satan, “I have infused a poison into him which will make him return to the dust from which he was taken.” but now, behold, our Champion whose heel was bruised has risen from the dead, and given us a pledge that all His followers shall rise form the dead also. Thus is Satan foiled, for death shall not retain a bone, nor a piece of a bone, of one of those who belonged to the woman’s Seed. At the trump of the archangel from the earth and from the sea they shall arise, and this shall be their shout, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Satan, knowing this, feels already that by the resurrection his head is broken. Glory be to the Christ of God for this! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm

Oh, the Triumph of That Hour!

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

…and thou shalt bruise His heel. -Genesis 3:15 

You know how all His life long His heel, that is, His lower part, His human nature, was perpetually being made to suffer. He carried our sicknesses and sorrows. But the bruising came mainly when both in body and in mind His whole human nature was made to agonize; when His soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death, and His enemies pierced His hands and His feet, and He endured the shame and pain of death by crucifixion. Look at your Master and your King upon the cross, all disdained with blood and dust! There was His heel most cruelly bruised. When they take down that precious body and wrap it in fair white linen and in spices, and lay it in Joseph’s tomb, they weep as they handle the casket in which the Deity had dwelt, for there again Satan had bruised His heel. It was not merely that God had bruised Him, “though it pleased the Father to bruise Him,” but the devil had let loose Herod, and Pilate, and Caiaphas, and the Jews, and the Romans, all of them his tools, upon Him whom he knew to be the Christ, so that He was bruised of the old serpent. That is all, however! It is only His heel, not His head, which is bruised! For lo, the Champion rises again; the bruise was not mortal nor continual. Though He dies, yet still so brief is the interval in which He slumbers in the tomb that His holy body hath not seen corruption, and He comes forth perfect and lovely in His manhood, rising from His grave as from a refreshing sleep after so long a day of unresting toil! Oh the triumph of that hour! As Jacob only halted on his thigh when he overcame the angel, so did Jesus only retain a scar in His heel, and that He bears to the skies as His glory and beauty. Before the throne He looks like a lamb that has been slain, but in the power of an endless life He liveth unto God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm

 

The Peerless Champion

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, prophecy, salvation Leave a comment

Of the woman’s Seed it was henceforth said,

Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. -Psalm 45:7 

The Seed of the woman by promise is to champion the cause, and oppose the dragon. That seed is the Lord Jesus Christ…As soon as He publicly came forward upon the stage of action, thirty years after, Satan met Him foot to foot. You know the story of the temptation in the wilderness, and how there the woman’s Seed fought with him who was a liar from the beginning. The devil assailed Him thrice with all the artillery of flattery, malice, craft and falsehood, but the peerless champion stood unwounded, and chased His foeman from the field. Then our Lord set up His kingdom, and called one and another unto Him, and carried the war into the enemy’s country…Yea, and He made His own disciples mighty against the evil one, for in His name they cast out devils, till Jesus said, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.”

Then there came a second personal conflict, for I take it that Gethsemane’s sorrows were to a great degree caused by a personal assault of Satan, for our Master said, “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” He said also, “The Prince of this world cometh.” What a struggle it was. Though Satan had nothing in Christ, yet did he seek if possible to lead Him away from completing His great sacrifice, and there did our Master sweat as it were great drops of blood, falling to the ground, in the agony which it cost Him to contend with the fiend. Then it was that our Champion began the last fight of all and won it to the bruising of the serpent’s head. Nor did He end it till He had spoiled principalities and powers and made a show of them openly.

“Lo, by the sons of hell He dies;
But as He hangs ‘twixt earth and skies,
He gives their prince a fatal blow,
And triumphs o’er the powers below” 

~C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1326.cfm