Christian Life

A Center of Mercy

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

“And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. “-Mark 1:29

Peter’s house was by no means the most notable building in the town of Capernaum…There hung the fisherman’s nets outside the door-the sole escutcheon and hatchment of one who was ordained to sit upon a throne and judge with his fellow apostles the twelve tribes of Israel. Beneath that lowly roof Immanuel deigned to unveil Himself: God with Simon. Little did Peter know how divine a blessing entered his house when Jews crossed the threshold, nor how vast a river of mercy would stream forth from his door down the streets of Capernaum. Now, dear friend, it may be that your dwelling, though very dear to you, is not very much thought of by anybody else; no poet or historian has ever written its annals, nor artist engraved its image. Perhaps it is not the very poorest cot in the place in which you live; still it is obscure enough, and no one as he rides along asks, “Who dwells there?” or, “What remarkable house is that?” Yet is there no reason why the Lord should not visit you and make your house like that of Obed-edom, in which the ark abode, or like that of Zaccheus to which salvation came. Our Lord can make your dwelling the center of mercy for the whole region, a little sun scattering light in all directions, a spiritual dispensary distributing health to the multitudes around. There is no reason except in yourself why the Lord should not make your residence in a city a greater blessing to it than the cathedral and all its clergy. Jesus cares not for fine buildings and carved stones; He will not disdain to come beneath your cottage roof, and there He will bring a treasury of blessings with Him, which shall enrich your house, and shall ensure the richest of boons to your neighbors. Why should it not be? Have you faith to pray this moment that it may be so? How much do I wish you would! More good by far will be done by a silent prayer now offered by yourself to that effect than by anything which can be spoken by me. If every Christian here will now put up the supplication, “Lord, dwell where I dwell, and in so doing make my house a blessing to the neighborhood,” marvellous results must follow. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1236.cfm

Experientially Taught by the Holy Spirit

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 5 Comments

…He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. – John 14:26

The Holy Spirit teaches us by refreshing the memory. “He shall bring all things to your remembrance.” He puts all those old treasures into the ark of our soul, and when the time comes, He opens it, and brings out these precious things in right good order, and shows them to us again and again. He refreshes the memory, and when this is done, He does better, He teaches us the Word, by making us feel its effect, and that, after all, is the best way of learning. You may try to teach a child the meaning of the term “sweetness;” but words will not avail, give him some honey and he will never forget it. You might seek to tell him of the glorious mountains, and the Alps, that pierce the clouds and send their snows peaks, like white-robed ambassadors up to the courts of heaven: take him there, let him see them, and he will never forget them. You might seek to paint for him the grandeur of the American continent, with its hills, and lakes, and rivers, such as the world saw not before: let him go and view it, and he will know more of the land than he could know by all your teaching when he sat at home. So the Holy Spirit does not only tell us of Christ’s love, He sheds it abroad in the heart. He does not merely tell us of the sweetness of pardon, but He gives us a sense of no condemnation, and then we know all about it better than we could have done by any teaching of words and thoughts. He takes us into the banqueting house and waves the banner of love over us…He takes us to the cross of Christ; and He bids us put our finger into the print of the nails, and our hands into His side, and tells us not to be “faithless, but believing,” and so in the highest and most effectual manner He teacheth us to profit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

The Holy Spirit Always Gives the Right Focus

Sherry Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. – 1 Corinthians 2:11

How hard it is sometimes to state a fact which you perfectly understand yourself, in such a way that another man may see it. It is like the telescope; there are many persons who are disappointed with a telescope, because whenever they walk into an observatory and put their eye to the glass, expecting to see the rings of Saturn, and the belts of Jupiter, they have said, “I can see nothing at all; a piece of glass, and a grain or two of dust is all I can see!” “But,” says the astronomer, when he comes, “I can see Saturn in all her glory.” Why cannot you? Because the focus does not suit the stranger’s eye. By a little skill, the focus can be altered so that the observer may be able to see what he could not see before. So is it with language; it is a sort of telescope by which I enable another to see my thoughts, but I cannot always give him the right focus. Now the Holy Spirit always gives the right focus to every truth. He sheds a light so strong and forcible upon the Word, that our spirit says. “Now I see it, now I understand it.” For even here, in this precious Book, there are words which I have looked at a hundred times, but I could not understand them, till at some favored hour, the key-word seemed as if it leaped up from the midst of the verse and said to me, “Look at the verse in My light,” and at once I perceived-not always from a word in the verse itself, but sometimes in the context-I perceived the meaning which I could not see before. This, too, is a part of the Spirit’s training-to shed a light upon truth. But the Spirit not only enlightens the truth, but He enlightens the understanding. ‘Tis marvellous, too, how the Holy Ghost does teach men who seemed as if they never could learn…The Spirit teaches us by enlightening the understanding. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

Excited Interest Wrought by the Holy Spirit

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

…He shall teach you all things… – John 14:26

In teaching God’s people, one of the first things the Spirit does is to excite interest in their minds. I frequently find that when men are being educated for the ministry, the hardest thing is to get them going. They are like bats on the ground; if once a bat gets on the earth he cannot fly until he creeps to the top of a stone and gets a little above the earth, and then he gets wing and can fly well enough. So there are many who have not got their energies aroused, they have talent but it is asleep, and we want a kind of railway-whistle to blow in their ears to make them start up and rub away the film from their eyes so that they may see. Now it is just so with men, when the Spirit of God begins to teach them. He excites their interest in the things which He wishes them to learn; He shows them that these things have a personal bearing upon their soul’s present and eternal welfare. He so brings precious truth home, that what the man thought was utterly indifferent yesterday, he now begins to esteem inestimably precious “Oh!” said he, “theology! Oh, what use can it be to me?” But now the knowledge of Christ and Him crucified has become to him the most desirable and excellent of all the sciences. The Holy Spirit awakens his interest.

Now, the Holy Spirit makes a man willing to learn…”Lord, humble me; Lord, bring me down; teach me those things that will make me cover my head with dust and ashes; show me my nothingness; teach me my emptiness; reveal to me my filthiness.” So that the Holy Spirit thus proceeds with His work awaking interest, and enkindling a teachable spirit. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

We Are Taught Christ

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. – John 14:26

It is the Holy Ghost who manifests the Savior to us in the glory of His person; the complex character of His manhood and of His deity; it is He who tells us of the love of His heart, of the power of His arm, of the clearness of His eye, the preciousness of His blood, and of the prevalence of His plea. To know that Christ is my Redeemer, is to know more than Plato could have taught me. To know that I am a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones; that my name is on His breast, and engraven on the palms of His hands, is to know more than the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge could teach to all their scholars, learn they never so well. Not at the feet of Gamaliel did Paul learn to say-“He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Not in the midst of the Rabbis, or at the feet of the members of the Sanhedrim, did Paul learn to cry-“Those things which I counted gain, I now count loss for Christ’s sake.” “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” No, this must have been taught as he himself confesseth-“not of flesh and blood, but of the Holy Ghost.”

I need only hint that it is also the Spirit who teaches us our adoption. Indeed, and the privileges of the new covenant, beginning from regeneration, running through redemption, justification pardon, sanctification, adoption, preservation, continual safety, even unto abundant entrance into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ-all is the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and especially that last point, for “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

We Must be Taught God

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

…He shall teach you all things… – John 14:26

God is to be heard in every wind, and seen in every cloud, but not all of God. God’s goodness, and God’s omnipotence, the world clearly manifesteth to us in the works of creation, but where do I read of His grace, where do I read of His mercy, or of His justice? There are lines which I cannot read in creation. Those must have ears indeed who can hear the notes of mercy or of grace whispering in the evening gale. No, brethren, these parts of God’s attributes are only revealed to us in this precious Book, and there they are so revealed that we cannot know them until the Spirit opens our eyes to perceive them. To know the inflexibility of Divine justice, and to see how God exacts punishment for every jot and tittle of sin, and yet to know that that full-justice does not eclipse His equally full-mercy, but that the two move around each other, without for a single instant coming into contact, or conflict, or casting the slighest shallow one or the other; to see how God is just and yet the justifier of the ungodly, and so to know God that my spirit loves His nature, appreciates His attributes, and desires to be like Him-this is a knowledge which astronomy cannot teach, which all the researches of the sciences can never give to us. We must be taught God, if we ever learn of Him-we must be taught God, by God the Holy Ghost. Oh that we may learn this lesson well, that we may be able to sing of His faithfulness, of His covenant love, of His immutability, of His boundless mercy, of His inflexible justice, that we may be able to talk to one another concerning that incomprehensible One, and may see Him even as a man seeth his friend; and may come to walk with Him as Enoch did all the days of our life. This, indeed, must be an education given to us by the Holy Ghost. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0315.cfm

He Convicts the Lost Man

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit, the unbelieving life 2 Comments

And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. – John 16:8

The Spirit teaches us the total ruin, depravity, and helplessness of self. Men pretend to know this by nature, but they do not know it; they can only speak the words of experience as parrots speak like men. But to know myself utterly lost and ruined; to know myself so lost, “that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing,” is a knowledge so distasteful, so hateful, so abominable to the carnal intellect, that man would not learn it if he could, and if he hath learnt it, it is a clear proof that God the Holy Spirit has made him willing to see the truth, and willing to receive it. When we sometimes hear great preachers telling us that there is something grand left in man yet, that when Adam fell he might have broken his little finger, but did not ruin himself entirely, that man is a grand being, in fact a noble creature and that we are all wrong in telling men they are depraved, and thundering out the law of God at them-am I astonished that they should speak thus? Nay, my brethren, it is the language of the carnal mind the whole world over, and in every age. No wonder that a man is eloquent upon this point, every man needs to be eloquent when he has to defend a lie. No wonder that glorious sentences have been uttered, and flowery periods poured forth from a cornucopia of eloquence upon this subject. A man need exhaust all logic and all rhetoric to defend a-falsehood; and it is not a wonder that he seeks to do it, for man believes himself to be rich, and increased in goods, and to have need of nothing, till the Holy Ghost teaches him that he is naked, and poor, and miserable.

Your destiny hangs there now; and will you rebel against the God in whose hand your soul’s eternal fate now rests? Will you lift the puny hand of your rebellion against him who alone can quicken you-without whose gracious energy you are dead, and must be destroyed? Will you go this day and sin against light and against knowledge? …Obey the divine command, believe on Christ and live! Hear thou the voice of Jehovah, who cries, “This is the commandment, that ye believe in Jesus Christ whom He hath sent.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon