Christian Life

Take Your Case to the King’s Bench

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

My times are in Thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me…Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon Thee: let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. – Psalm 31: 15, 17-18

We may say to ourselves, when our enemies bear very hard upon us, “I am not in their hands. My times are in Thy hand.” Here are gentlemen judging and condemning us with great rapidity. They say, “He has made a great mistake: he is an old bigot; he has snuffed himself out.” This is easier said than done. The candle shines still. They say of you, “He is foolish and headstrong, and on religious matters he is as obstinate as a mule; and he will come to grief.” You have not come to grief yet in the way they predict, and they had better not prophesy till they know. The godly are not in the hands of those who mock them. The wicked may gnash their teeth at believers, but they cannot destroy them. Here is their comfort, they have committed their spirit to the hand of God, and He will sacredly preserve the precious deposit. Fear not the judgments of men. Appeal to a higher court. Take the case to the King’s Bench. Go to God himself with the matter, and He will bring forth your judgment as the light, and your righteousness as the noonday.

Do the malicious resolve to crush you? They will use to the utmost their little power; but there is a higher power which will hold them in. Rejoicingly say, “My times are in Thy hand.” Do they treat you with contempt? Do they sneer at you What does that matter? Your honor comes not from men. Their contempt is the highest compliment the wicked can pay you. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2205.cfm

Do Right For God Will Provide

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

My times are in Thy hand…Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant: save me for Thy mercies’ sake. – Psalm 31:15, 16

You know how craftily Satan will urge a temptation. He says, “Now you have a large family, and your chief duty is to provide for them. Your position brings with it many wants. Here is a plan of making money; others follow it. It may not be quite straight, but you must not be particular in such a world as this, for nobody else is.” How will you meet this? If you can say to Satan, “It is not my business to provide for myself or for my family: my times are in God’s hand; and His name is Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord will provide; and I will not do a questionable thing, though it would fill my house with silver and gold from the cellar to the chimney-pot. I shall not meddle with my Lord’s business. It is His to provide for me: it is mine to walk uprightly, and obey His Word.” This is a noble answer to the arch-enemy. But supposing he says, “Well, but you are already in difficulties, and you cannot extricate yourself if you are too precise. A poor man cannot afford to keep a conscience: it is an expensive luxury in these days. Give your conscience a holiday, and you can soon get out of your trouble.” Let your reply be, “O prince of darkness, it is no business of mine to extricate myself! My times are in God’s hand. I have taken my case to Him, and He will work for me in this matter better than I can do for myself! He does not wish me to do a wrong thing, that I may do for myself what He has promised to do for me.” We are not called upon to eke out God’s wisdom with a bit of our own wickedness. God forbid! Do the right, even if the heavens should fall. The Lord who has taken your business into His hand will bear you through.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2205.cfm

 

Merciful Providence

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

All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. – Romans 8:28

Have you the notion that fate grinds on like an enormous wheel, ruthlessly crushing everything that lies in its way, not pausing for pity, nor turning aside for mercy? Remember that, if you liken Providence to a wheel, it must be a wheel which is full of eyes. Its every revolution is in wisdom and goodness. God’s eye leaves nothing in providence blind; but fills all things with sight. God works all things according to His purpose; but then He Himself works them. There is all the difference between the lone machinery of fixed fate, and the presence of a gracious, loving Spirit ruling all things. Things do happen as He plans them; but He Himself is there to make them happen, and to moderate, and guide, and secure results…With a living, loving God to superintend all things, we feel ourselves at home, resting near our Father’s heart.

Beloved, God is near His people with all His attributes; His wisdom, His power, His faithfulness, His immutability; and these are under oath to work for the good of those who put their trust in Him…Yes, God considers our times, and thinks them over; with His heart and soul planning to do us good. That august mind, out of which all things spring, bows itself to us; and those eternal wings, which cover the universe, also brood over us and our household, and our daily wants and woes. Our God sits not still as a listless spectator of our griefs, suffering us to be drifted like waifs upon the waters of circumstance; but is busily occupying Himself at all times for the defense and perfecting of His children. He leads us that He may bring us home to the place where His flock shall rest for ever.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2205.cfm

If We Were Wise…

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

O love the LORD, all ye His saints: for the LORD preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. – Psalm 31:23

Our Puritanic fathers walked with God the more readily because they believed in God as arranging everything in their daily business and domestic life; and they saw Him in the history of the nation, and in all the events which transpired. The tendency of this age is to get further and further from God. Men will scarcely tolerate a Creator now, but everything must be evolved. To get God one stage further back is the ambition of modern philosophy; whereas, if we were wise, we should labor to clear out all obstacles, and leave a clear channel for drawing near to God, and for God to draw near to us. When we see that in His hand are all our ways, we feel that God is real and near… Events happen not to man by a fortune which has no order or purpose in it. “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.” Chance is a heathenish idea which the teaching of the Word has cast down, even as the ark threw down Dagon, and brake him in pieces. Blessed is that man who has done with chance, who never speaks of luck; but believes that, from the least even to the greatest, all things are ordained of the Lord. We dare not leave out the least event. The creeping of an aphid upon a rosebud is as surely arranged by the decree of Providence as the march of a pestilence through a nation. Believe ye this; for if the least be omitted from the supreme government, so may the next be, and the next, till nothing is left in the divine hand. There is no place for chance, since God filleth all things.  If the hand of God is laid upon all our surroundings, God Himself is near us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2205.cfm

Secure in Thy Eternal Hand

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Father 6 Comments

My times are in Thy hand…Oh how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee; which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the sons of men! – Psalm 31:15, 19

Sit thou still, O child, at thy great Father’s feet, and let Him do as seemeth Him good! When thou canst not comprehend Him, know that a babe cannot understand the wisdom of its sire. Thy Father comprehends all things, though thou dost not: let His wisdom be enough for thee. Everything in the hand of God is where it may be left without anxiety; and it is where it will be carried through to a prosperous issue. Things prosper which are in His hand. “My times are in Thy hand,” is an assurance that none can disturb, or pervert, or poison them. In that hand we rest as securely as rests a babe upon its mother’s breast. Where could our interests be so well secured as in the eternal hand? What a blessing it is to see by the eye of faith all things that concern you grasped in the hand of God! What peace as to every matter which could cause anxiety flows into the soul when we see all our hopes built upon so stable a foundation, and preserved by such supreme power! “My times are in Thy hand!”

“Our times are in Thy hand,
Whatever they may be,
Pleasing or painful, dark or bright,
As best may seem to Thee.”

 The Lord Jesus loved me, and gave Himself for me, and my times are in those hands which were nailed to the cross for my redemption. What will be the effect of such a faith, if it be clear, personal, and enduring? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2205.cfm

Our Loving Father’s Care

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

Into Thine hand I commit my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O LORD God of truth. – Psalm 31:5

In life we use the words which our Lord so patiently used in death: we hand over our spirits to the hand of God. If our lives were not appointed of heaven, we should wish they were. If there were no overruling Providence, we would crave for one. We would merge our own wills in the will of the great God, and cry, “Not as we will, but as Thou wilt.” It would be a hideous thought to us if any one point of our life-story were left to chance, or to the frivolities of our own fancy; but with joyful hope we fall back upon the eternal foresight and the infallible wisdom of God, and cry, “Thou shalt choose our inheritance for us.” We would beg Him to take our times into His hand, even if they were not there.

Moreover, beloved brethren, our times are in the Lord’s hands, because we are one with Christ Jesus. “We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.” Everything that concerns Christ touches the great Father’s heart. He thinks more of Jesus than of all the world. Hence it follows that when we become one with Jesus, we become conspicuous objects of the Father’s care. He takes us in hand for the sake of His dear Son. He that loves the Head loves all the members of the mystical body. We cannot conceive of the dear Redeemer as ever being out of the Father’s mind; neither can any of us who are in Christ be away from the Father’s active, loving care: our tines are ever in His hand. All His eternal purposes work towards the glorifying of the Son, and quite as surely they work together for the good of those who are in His Son. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2205.cfm

 

My Times Are in Thy hands

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises 2 Comments
O Israel, trust in the LORD; He is their help and their shield. – Psalm 115:9
My times are in Thy hand – Psalm 31:15

To be entirely at the disposal of God is life and liberty for us. The great truth is this-all that concerns the believer is in the hands of the Almighty God. “My times”, these change and shift; but they change only in accordance with unchanging love, and they shift only according to the purpose of One with whom is no variableness nor shadow of a turning. “My times”, that is to say, my ups and my downs, my health and my sickness, my poverty and my wealth-all those are in the hand of the Lord, who arranges and appoints, according to His holy will, the length of my days, and the darkness of my nights. Storms and calms vary the seasons at the divine appointment. Whether times are reviving or depressing remains with Him who is Lord both of time and of eternity; and we are glad it is so…Whatever is to come out of our life, is in our heavenly Father’s hand. He guards the vine of life, and He also protects the clusters which shall be produced thereby. If life be as a field, the field is under the hand of the great Husbandman, and the harvest of that field is with Him also. The ultimate results of His work of grace upon us, and of His education of us in this life, are in the highest hand. We are not in our own hands, nor in the hands of earthly teachers; but we are under the skillful operation of hands which make nothing in vain. The close of life is not decided by the sharp knife of the fates; but by the hand of love. We shall not die before our time, neither shall we be forgotten and left upon the stage too long…We are absolutely at His disposal, and all our circumstances are arranged by Him in all their details. We are comforted to have it so. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2205.cfm