Christian Life

Then Shalt Thou Come to the King

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

And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God – Job 19:26

Concerning this very body, there is no decree of annihilation. It will smoulder away. It may be taken up by the spade of the careless sexton, and scattered to the winds of heaven may all the atoms of the body be. But there is a life-germ within it which no human power can destroy, and over which the divine eye perpetually watches; and when that mysterious and long-expected sound of the angelic trump shall ring o’er land and sea, through heaven and earth, and the graves shall all be opened, then shall my soul find my body yet again-fashioned after a more beautiful form; more fit for the spirit than aforetime; more elastic; altogether free from weakness; no longer such as shall be subject to pain, to sickness, to accident, to decay, to ultimate corruption; but a spiritual body, raised in power, in glory, and in immortality; not raised in the likeness of the first Adam in the garden, but in the likeness of the second Adam in the everlasting Paradise of God. Courage, my eyes, courage! Ye shall be closed for a while, but ye shall not be so for ever, for ye, even ye, shall strike the strings of those celestial harps that pour forth His praise. Courage, all ye members of my body, which have been sanctified to be members of Christ, and made to be parts of the Holy Spirit’s temple! Ye shall all take your part in the grand triumphal entry of Christ, when He shall descend to take possession of His kingdom. “Though worms destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall behold for myself, and not another.” So go to thy bed in the earth, poor body, and sleep there awhile. Bathe thyself like her who bathed herself in spices to make herself ready for the King, so go and get thyself prepared to meet thy Lord. Put off thy work-day dress, and put on thy Sabbath garments, thy bridal array, and then shalt thou come to the King and see Him in His beauty…Yea, because He lives in the body which He bore, this body shall live again, also. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

A Life That Cannot Be Suspended

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

Because I live, ye shall live also – John 14:19

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. – 1 Corinthians 15:54

You are travelling along the iron road of the railway, and there comes a sudden jerk, and you stop. What is it? It is the thought of death…It is an item in the great world of life that to you who are in Him is scarcely worth consideration, because the text over-rides that, and swallows it up, as it is written “death is swallowed up in victory”: it is made as though it did not exist. “Because I live, ye shall live also.” Your continued life of happiness, of holiness, of spirituality, of consecration, and of obedience-which, indeed is your only life worth having-is guaranteed to you in the text. Death cannot interfere with it, not even by the space of a single second-nay,. I tell you not even by the space of the ticking of a clock. What, a Christian die? “Because I live, ye shall live also,” is never suspended. There is not time for it to be suspended in. Do you know what death really is? Does it take long to die? I have heard of men who have been said to be weeks in dying. Not so; they were weeks living; the dying occupied no space; that was done at once, and immediately. And so with the believer. To him death is so slight a jerk that he still keeps on upon the same line. He still lives, only there is this difference, that it is as though the railway had hitherto been running through a tunnel, and he now comes out of it into the open plain. His life below was the train in the tunnel, but when he dies, as we call it, there is a jerk, and then it comes right out of the tunnel into the fair, open, champaign country of heaven, where all is clear and bright, where all the birds are singing, and the darkness is over, and the mist and fogs are gone, and his soul is for ever blessed… ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

The Highest Life

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

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.- John 10:10

Any man may be spiritually alive, and yet he may not know much about the higher life. There is in spiritual life a scale of degree. One man is just alive unto God; another man may be vigorous; another may be rapturously consecrated. I hope you and I will anxiously desire to get the highest form of spiritual life that is known. We do not wish to be beggars in the kingdom of Christ, but, if we can, to take our place in the House of Peers, to be princes through Jesus Christ. We need not be poor; Christ is willing to enrich us. We are not straitened in Him; we are straitened in ourselves. Now, Christ gives the promise, “Because I live,” saith He, “the highest life, far above all principalities and powers, ye shall live also this higher life with Me.” You may have it; you may obtain it, but brethren, if you want to get it, never go to Moses for it; never go to yourselves for it. Do not seek to school yourselves by rules, and regulations, and resolutions, or by a morbid asceticism, such as some men delight in; but go the living Saviour, and in the living liberty which you will enjoy in communion with Him, your soul will take unto itself wings, and mount into a clearer atmosphere: your spirit will be braced to a higher degree of robust devotion: you will draw nearer to heaven, because you have got nearer to Christ, who is the Lord of heaven. “Because I live, ye shall have life: ye shall have that life continued, and ye shall have that life yet more abundantly: I am come, not only that ye may have life, but more abundantly.” There are your Master’s words; plead them before your Master’s throne.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

Christ’s Promise

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

…because I live, ye shall live also. – John 14:19

Oh! dear friends! when we once get spiritual life into us, what a thousand enemies there are who try to put it out! Many and many a time has it seemed to go hard with my soul as to whether I really had a spark of life within my spirit. Temptation after temptation have I endured until it appeared as if I must yield my hold on Christ and give up my hope. There has been conflict upon conflict, and struggle upon struggle, until at last the enemy has got his foot upon the neck, and my whole being has trembled, and had it not been for Christ’s promise, “Because I live, ye shall live also,” it might have gone harder with me, and I might have despaired, and given up all hope, and laid down to die. The assurance, then, that the spiritual life of the Christian must be maintained because Christ lives, was the only power to get me the victory. Let it teach us, then, this practical lesson. Whenever our spiritual life is very weak, and we want it to grow stronger, let us get to the living Christ for the supply of His strength. When you feel you are ready to die spiritually, go to the Saviour for revived life. The text is like a hand that points us to the storehouse. You who are in the desert, there is a secret spring under your feet, and you know not where it is; this is the mysterious finger which points you to the spot. Contemplate Christ; believe in Christ; draw yourselves by faith nearer and nearer to the Lord Jesus Christ, and so shall your life receive a divine impetus which it has not known for many a day. “Because I live, ye shall live also.”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

Because Christ Lives, We Live

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 4 Comments

…because I live, ye shall live also. – John 14:19

Life is promised to Christ’s people. This does not mean their natural existence. That they have received from Adam, and, through their sin, it has become a curse to them, rather than a blessing. Should they remain unpardoned, the fact of continued existence will become to them the dreadful of calamities, since it must be an existence in God’s holy abhorrence of sin for ever; driven from every glimpse or hope of forgiveness.

The life which comes to us through Christ is of this sort-I trust you know it in your own hearts-it is life spiritual, given to us in regeneration. When the Holy Spirit quickens a dead soul, that dead soul then receives the life of Christ. No man is alive unto God spiritually, except through Christ. Because Christ lives, we live. When a dead soul gets into living contact with the living Saviour by the power of the Spirit, then it is that spiritual life begins. The very first evidence of spiritual life is trusting in Jesus, which shows that us the first symptom is alliance to Christ, the cause of the life must be somewhere here, namely, union with Christ. One of the very first outward signs is prayer-prayer to Christ, and that, again, rises from the fact that Christ gives us of His life, and then that life goes back again to Him…Do you not see, “Because I live, ye shall live”? Then no sinner ever will live spiritually apart from Christ. Though you and I cannot quicken them, yet we can preach the gospel to them, and faith cometh by hearing, and where faith is, there life is. It is no use trying to raise the dead by preaching the law to them. That is only covering them up fairly with a lie in their right hand; but preach of dying love and of rising power, to tell of pardons bought with blood, and to declare that Christ died a substitute for sinners-this is the hopeful way of bringing life to the dead. It is by such instrumentality that souls are brought to life eternal. Because Christ is alive, His elect in due time receives spiritual life by the power of the Holy Spirit, and, although once they were dead in sin, they begin to live unto righteousness.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

His Intercession for Saints and Sinners

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

Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. – Hebrews 7:25

Why, gaze awhile and you may think you see Him now. Just as the Jew saw Aaron, waving the censer, standing between the living and the dead, and staying the plague, even so is Christ standing at this hour between the living and the dead, and so moving the whole Deity to spare the guilty yet a little longer, whilst He makes intercession for them that they may live. And then comes His higher intercession for His elect, of whom He says, “I pray for them; I pray not for the world.” He lives, then, an actual life, of which you and I reap the daily fruits. Not a life of slumber and stillness, but an active, busy life, by which He continually dispenses gifts to us.

For this reason it is well to remind you, that, therefore, Jesus only lives as a man in one place. When we speak of Christ being found in every assembly of His people, we understand that of His presence in His Godhead and by His Holy Spirit, who rules on earth in this dispensation of the Spirit. But the man Christ can be but in one place, and He is now at the right hand of the Majesty on high. It is absurd, it is horrible both to faith and to reason, to say that Christ’s body is eaten, and that His blood is drunk in tens of thousands of places wherever priests choose to offer what they call “the mass.” A “mass” of profanity, indeed, it is! Our Lord Jesus Christ, as to His real, positive, corporeal presence, is not here. As to His flesh and His blood, He is not, and cannot be, here. He will be here one day, when He shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the trump of the archangel and the voice of God, but in His real person, He is now where His saints are-before the throne, whence by-and-bye He will descend. Meanwhile, His spiritual presence is our joy and our gladness, but His corporeal presence-a doctrine which our faith grasps and lays hold of-His corporeal presence is before the throne of God, and there He lives in proper flesh and blood as the Son of Man. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

I See My Lord, Not by Fancy, but by Faith

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

Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. – Romans 8:34

We are so very apt to mystify and becloud everything, and to suppose that Christ lives by His influence only, or lives by His Spirit. Brethren, He lives, the very man that died, as surely as He bled upon the tree, and in His own_proper person, from five actual wounds poured out the warm life-torrents of His heart, so surely does He actually live at this present moment in the midst of unnumbered hearts that sound His praise-the delightful object of the vision of the myriads of spirits who continually adore Him. He actually lives; He really and truly lives, as He lived here below… He is as busy now as He was when here. He proposed to Himself when He went away a certain work. “I go to prepare a place for you,” said He. He is preparing that place for us still. He intercedes, also, daily for His people. Oh! if your faith is strong enough, even now you can see Him distinctly standing before the throne of God, pleading His glorious merits. I think I see Him now as clearly as ever the Jews saw Aaron when he stood with his breast-plate on before the mercy-seat, for remember, the Jew never did see Aaron at all there, for the curtain was dropped, and Aaron was within the veil, and therefore, the Jew could only see him in his fancy. But I say I see Him as clearly as that, for I see my Lord, not by fancy, but by faith. There, where the veil is rent, so that He is not hidden from my soul’s gaze, I see Him with my name and yours upon His breast, pleading before God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm