Character of Jesus

Cry to God as a Child

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

“…why hast Thou forsaken Me?” – Matthew 27:46

“But it is good for me to draw near to God; I have put my trust in the Lord GOD, that I may declare all Your works.” – Psalm 75:28

Depend upon it, the best way to get away from trouble, or to get great help under it, is to run close in to God. In one of Quarles’s poems he has the picture of a man striking another with a great nail. Now the further off the other is, the heavier it strikes him. So the man whom God is smiting runs close in, and he cannot be hurt at all. O my God, my God, when away from Thee affliction stuns me, but I will come in close with Thee, and then even my affliction I will take to be a cause of glory, and glory in tribulations also, so that Thy blast shall not sorely wound my spirit.

Our Lord, when He does cry, cries with the inquiring voice of a child… Oh! learn it well. Do practice it when you are in trouble. If you are in such a condition at this time, practice it now, and in the pew say, “Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me. Search me and try me, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3507.cfm

Because Thou Didst It

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

“Let the day perish wherein I was born…” – Job 3:3

“…why hast Thou forsaken Me?” – Matthew 27:46

Listen to Job, and we must not condemn Job, for we should not have been half so good as he, I daresay; but he does let his spirit utter itself sometimes in bitterness. He curses the day of his birth and so on; but the Lord Jesus does not do that. There is not a syllable about “cursed be the day in which I was born in Bethlehem, and in which I came amongst such a rebellious race as this”-no, not a word, not a word. And even the best of men when in sorrow have at least wished that things were not just so. David, when he had lost Absalom, wished that he had died, instead of Absalom. But Christ does not appear to want things altered. He does not say, “Lord, this is a mistake. Would God I had died by the hands of Herod when he sought my life, or had perished when they tried to throw Me down the hill of Capernaum.” No; nothing of the kind. There is grief, but there is no complaining; there is sorrow, but there is no rebellion. Now this is the point, beloved, I want to bring to you. If you should suffer extremely, and it should ever come to that terrible pinch that even God’s love and the enjoyment of it appears to be gone, put your finger to your lip and keep it there. “I was dumb with silence; I opened not My mouth, because Thou didst it.” Believe that He is a good God still. Know that assuredly He is working for thy good, even now, and let not a syllable escape thee by way of murmuring, or if it does, repent of it and recall it. Thou hast a right to speak to God, but not to murmur against Him, and if thou wouldst be like thy Lord, thou wouldst say just this, “Why hast Thou forsaken me?” But thou wilt say no more, and there wilt thou leave Him, and if’ there come no answer to thy question thou wilt be content to be without an answer.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3507.cfm

Don’t Give Him Up!

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

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. – Hebrews 13:8

I would like to put this personally to any tried child of God here. Are you going to let go your God because you have lost His smile? Then I ask you, Did you base your faith upon His smile? If you did, you mistook the true ground of faith. The ground of a believer’s confidence is not God’s smile, but God’s promise. It is not the temporary sunshine of His love, but His deep eternal love itself, as it reveals itself in the covenant and in the promises…Oh! Come then to this. The promise is as good as ever. Christ is the same as ever; His blood is as great a plea as ever; and the oath of God is as immutable as ever. We must get away from all building upon our apprehensions of God’s love. It is the love itself we must build on-not on our enjoyment of His presence, but on His faithfulness and on His truth. Therefore, be not cast down, but still call Him, “My God.”

Moreover, I may put it to you, if, because God frowns, you give Him up, what else do you mean to do? Why, is not it better to trust in an angry God than not to trust in God at all? Suppose thou leavest off the walk of faith, what wilt thou do? The carnal man never knew what faith was, and, therefore, gets on pretty fairly in his own blind, dead way; but you have been quickened and made alive, enlightened, and if you give up your faith, what is to become of you? Oh! hold to Him then.

“For if thine eye of faith be dim,
Still hold on Jesus, sink or swim;
Still at His footstool bow the knee
And Israel’s God thy strength shall be.”

Don’t give Him up. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3507.cfm

My Strong One

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

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” – Matthew 27:46

Now it is easy to believe that God is ours when He smiles upon us, and when we have the sweet fellowship of His love in our hearts; but the point for faith to attend to, is to hold to God when He gives the hard words, when His providence frowns upon thee, and when even His Spirit seems to be withdrawn from thee. Oh! let go every thing, but let not go thy God. If the ship be tossed and ready to sink, and the tempest rages exceedingly, cast out the ingots, let the gold go, throw out the wheat, as Paul’s companions did. Let even necessaries go, but oh! still hold to thy God; give not up thy God; say still, notwithstanding all, “In the teeth of all my feelings, doubts, and suspicions, I hold Him yet; He is my God; I will not let Him go.”

You know that in the text our Lord calls God in the original His “strong one”-“Eli, Eli”-“My strong one, My mighty one.” So let the Christian, when God turns away the brightness of His presence, still believe that all his strength lies in God, and that, moreover, God’s power is on his side. Though it seemed to crush him, yet faith says, “It is a power that will not crush me. If He smite me, what will I do? I will lay hold upon His arm, and He will put strength in me. I will deal with God as Jacob did with the angel. If He wrestle with me, I will borrow strength from Him, and I will wrestle still with Him until I get the blessing from Him.” Beloved, we must neither let go of God, nor let go of our sense of His power to save us. We must hold to our possession of Him, and hold to the belief that He is worth possessing, that He is God all-sufficient, and that He is our God still.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3507.cfm

Look to Your God Again

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

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. Matthew 27:45

The comfortable presence of God, which had all His life long sustained Him, began to withdraw from Him in the garden, and appeared to be quite gone when He was just in the article of death upon the cross; and meanwhile the waves of God’s wrath on account of sin began to break over His spirit, and He was in the condition of a soul deserted by God. Now sometimes believers come into the same condition, not to the same extent, but in a measure. Yesterday they were full of joy, for the love of God was shed abroad in their hearts, but today that sense of love is gone; they droop; they feel heavy. Now the temptation will be at such times for them to sit down and look into their own hearts; and if they do, they will grow more wretched every moment, until they will come well nigh to despair; for there is no comfort to be found within, when there is no light from above…Now observe our Lord. He is deserted of God, but instead of looking in, and saying, “My soul, why art Thou this? Why art Thou that? Why art Thou cast down? Why dost Thou mourn?” He looks straight away from that dried-up well that is within, to those eternal waters that never can be stayed, and which are always full of refreshment. He cries, “My God.” He knows which way to look, and I say to every Christian here, it is a temptation of the devil, when you are desponding, and when you are not enjoying your religion as you did, to begin peering and searching about in the dunghill of your own corruptions, and stirring over all that you are feeling, and all you ought to feel, and all you do not feel, and all that. Instead of that look from within, look above, look to your God again, for the light will come there.~ C. H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3507.cfm

This Memorable Cry

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, The Father 4 Comments

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is to say, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”- Matthew 27:46

It has been well said that every word in this memorable cry deserves to have an emphasis laid upon it. If you read it, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? I marvel not that My disciples should, but why hast Thou gone, My Father God? Why couldst Thou leave Me?” there is a wondrous meaning there. Then take it thus, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? I know why Thou hast smitten Me; I can understand why Thou dost chasten Me; but why hast Thou forsaken Me? Wilt Thou allow Me no ray of love from the brightness of Thine eyes-no sense of Thy presence whatsoever?” This was the wormwood and the gall of all the Saviour’s bitter cup. Then God forsook Him in His direst need. Or if you take it thus, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” there comes another meaning. “Me, Thy well beloved, Thine eternal well beloved, shine innocent, Thy harmless, Thine afflicted Son-why hast Thou forsaken Me? “Then, indeed, it is a marvel of marvels not that God should forsake His saints, or appear to do so, or that He should forsake sinners utterly, but that He should forsake His only Son…I gather that many a child of God has had to say precisely what the Lord Jesus, the first-born of the family, uttered upon the cross. Now as God’s children are brought into the same circumstances as Christ, and Christ is considered the exemplar…do as Jesus did. If you come into His condition, lift up your hearts to God, that you may act as He did in that condition: Under desertion of soul, the Lord Jesus still turned to God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3507.cfm

The Christ-life

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

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering… – Colossians 3:12

The exhibition of the Christ-life in the saints is the legitimate inference from the fact that Christ is all to them. If Christ is all, and yet I being a Christian am not like Christ, my Christianity is a transparent sham, I am nothing but a base pretender, and my outward religiousness is a pompous pageantry for my soul to be carried to hell in-nothing more. It is a gilded coffin for a lifeless spirit. I shall perish with a double destruction, if I have dared to profane the name of Christ by taking it upon me, when I have not the essence of the Christian religion within me…O brethren, these are searching things to everyone of us. Who amongst us lives as he should at home? Could you bear that the angel who visits your house should publish, before the great cloud of witnesses, all that he has seen there? In your shops, in your businesses, you professors, are you always upright and straightforward as Christians should be? You merchants on the Exchange, are not some of you, who profess to be Christians, as greedy and as overreaching as others? I charge you, if you have any respect for Christ, lay down His name if you will not endeavor to honor it; you will be lost, you covetous money-grubbers, you earth-scrapers, who live only for this world, you will be lost, you need not doubt of that, you will be lost sure enough; but why need you make the assurance of your condemnation doubly sure by the base imposture of calling yourselves Christians…If you are not living as you should, do not pretend to be what you are not. Seek ye unto God, that the life of Christ being in you, you may manifest it in your conversation.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1006.cfm