Christian Life

A Solemn Lesson of Patience

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

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. – John 19:28

Beloved, if our Master said, “I thirst,” do we expect every day to drink of streams from Lebanon? He was innocent, and yet He thirsted; shall we marvel if guilty ones are now and then chastened? If He was so poor that His garments were stripped from Him, and He was hung up upon the tree, penniless and friendless, hungering and thirsting, will you henceforth groan and murmur because you bear the yoke of poverty and want? There is bread upon your table to-day, and there will be at least a cup of cold water to refresh you. You are not, therefore, so poor as He. Complain not, then. Shall the servant be above His Master, or the disciple above his Lord? Let patience have her perfect work. You do suffer. Perhaps, dear sister, you carry about with you a gnawing disease which eats at your heart, but Jesus took our sicknesses, and His cup was more bitter than yours. In your chamber let the gasp of your Lord as He said, “I thirst,” go through your ears, and as you hear it let it touch your heart and cause you to gird up yourself and say, “Doth He say, ‘I thirst’? Then I will thirst with Him and not complain, I will suffer with Him and not murmur.” The Redeemer’s cry of “I thirst” is a solemn lesson of patience to His afflicted…May we not be half ashamed of our pleasures when He says, “I thirst”? May we not despise our loaded table while He is neglected? Shall it ever be a hardship to be denied the satisfying draught when He said, “I thirst.” Shall carnal appetites be indulged and bodies pampered when Jesus cried “I thirst”? What if the bread be dry, what if the medicine be nauseous; yet for His thirst there was no relief but gall and vinegar, and dare we complain? For His sake we may rejoice in self-denials and accept Christ and a crust as all we desire between here and heaven.  Henceforth, also, let us cultivate the spirit of resignation, for we may well rejoice to carry a cross which His shoulders have borne before us. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm

A Mournful List of Honours

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

“O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn My glory into shame?” – Psalm 4:2

An instructive writer has made a mournful list of the honours which the blinded people of Israel awarded to their long-expected King:

(1.) They gave Him a procession of honour, in which Roman legionaries, Jewish priests, men and women, took a part, He Himself bearing His cross. This is the triumph which the world awards to Him who comes to overthrow man’s direst foes. Derisive shouts are His only acclamations, and cruel taunts His only paeans of praise.

(2.) They presented Him with the wine of honour. Instead of a golden cup of generous wine they offered Him the criminal’s stupefying death-draught, which He refused because He would preserve an uninjured taste wherewith to taste of death; and afterwards when He cried, “I thirst,” they gave Him vinegar mixed with gall, thrust to His mouth upon a sponge. Oh! wretched, detestable inhospitality to the King’s Son.

(3.) He was provided with a guard of honour, who showed their esteem of Him by gambling over His garments, which they had seized as their booty. Such was the body-guard of the adored of heaven; a quaternion of brutal gamblers.

(4.) A throne of honour was found for Him upon the bloody tree; no easier place of rest would rebel men yield to their liege Lord. The cross was, in fact, the full expression of the world’s feeling towards Him; “There,” they seemed to say, “Thou Son of God, this is the manner in which God Himself should be treated, could we reach Him.”

(5.) The title of honour was nominally “King of the Jews,” but that the blinded nation distinctly repudiated, and really called Him “King of thieves,” by preferring Barabbas, and by placing Jesus in the place of highest shame between two thieves. His glory was thus in all things turned into shame by the sons of men, but it shall yet gladden the eyes of saints and angels, world without end. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

Our Lord’s Thirst

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

“I thirst.” – John 19:28

Our Lord endured thirst to an extreme degree, for it was the thirst of death which was upon Him, and more, it was the thirst of one whose death was not a common one, for “He tasted death for every man.” That thirst was caused, perhaps, in part by the loss of blood, and by the fever created by the irritation caused by His four grievous wounds. The nails were fastened in the most sensitive parts of the body, and the wounds were widened as the weight of His body dragged the nails through His blessed flesh and tore His tender nerves. The extreme tension produced a burning feverishness. It was pain that dried His mouth and made it like an oven, till He declared, in the language of the twenty-second psalm, “My tongue cleaveth to My jaws.” It was a thirst such as none of us have ever known, for not yet has the death dew condensed upon our brows. We shall perhaps know it in our measure in our dying hour, but not yet, nor ever so terribly as He did. Our Lord felt that grievous drought of dissolution by which all moisture seems dried up, and the flesh returns to the dust of death: this those know who have commenced to tread the valley of the shadow of death. Jesus, being a man, escaped none of the ills which are allotted to man in death. He is indeed “Immanuel, God with us” everywhere.

Believing this, let us tenderly feel how very near akin to us our Lord Jesus has become… Can you help feeling how very near Jesus is to us when His lips must be moistened with a sponge, and He must be so dependent upon others as to ask drink from their hand?…Ah, beloved, our Lord was so truly man that all our griefs remind us of Him: the next time we are thirsty we may gaze upon Him; and whenever we see a friend faint and thirsting while dying, we may behold our Lord dimly, but truly, mirrored in His members. How near akin the thirsty Saviour is to us; let us love Him more and more. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1409.cfm

Sing!

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O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. – Psalm 95:1

When you can say, “I feel like singing all the time,” then sing; and when you say, “I do not feel like singing,” make a point of singing then, just to let the devil know that he is not your master. It is a good thing to praise Christ in the presence of His friends; it is sometimes a better thing to extol Him in the presence of His enemies. It is a great thing to praise Jesus Christ by day; but there is no music sweeter than the nightingale’s, and she praises God by night. It is well to praise the Lord for His mercy when you are in health, but make sure that you do it when you are sick, for then your praise is more likely to be genuine. When you are deep down in sorrow, do not rob God of the gratitude that is due to Him; never stint Him of His revenue of praise whatever else goes short. Praise Him sometimes on the high-sounding cymbals, -crash, crash, -with all your heart and being; but when you cannot do that, just sit, and mean His praise in solemn silence in the deep quiet of your spirit. To be redeemed from a dying world, to be fetched out from a condemned world, to be brought out from slavery, to be made a child of God, is enough to make you emulate the angels, and even to excel them. They cannot rise to so high a pitch of gratitude as you ought to reach even now, and ought to keep up all the days of your life, and then “for ever and ever “in the presence of the King. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2483.cfm

Giving God the Glory

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

To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. – Galatians 1:5

God is glorified in Christ’s death. Has the Father given His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us? Then there is glory enough in Jesus Christ upon the cross to last throughout eternity. Fix your eye upon that bleeding Savior; behold the glorious justice of God in laying guilt on Him, and punishing it on Him, and behold also the inconceivable love of God in thus putting His Only-begotten to death that we might live through Him. You need not range the world around to see the glory of God in nature, though that is a delightful employment, for there is enough glory in the cross of Christ to last throughout all eternity. The apostle says, “To whom be glory for ever and ever.” How long that is, I cannot tell. “For ever” is without any end, but Paul says, “For ever and ever,” and there is glory enough in the cross of Christ to last for ever and ever, as long as the Eternal Jehovah Himself exists.

Well then, has Jesus Christ delivered us from the world? Have we fled to Him, and been pardoned? Are we accepted in the Beloved? Then, let us begin to glorify God now. Let us glorify His dear Son, let us praise Him. Let every beat of our heart tell out our joyous thankfulness, and so continually yield sweet music unto God…for it is indeed a subject of great praise to be separated from the world, and to be made holy unto the Lord. But, brothers and sisters, when you once begin the music, never leave off, because, as the apostle says, glory is to be given to God “for ever and ever.” I saw, last week, a brother from the backwoods of America, and he said to me, “Twenty years ago, I was in your vestry, and you did me much good by something that you said to me.” I asked, “What did I say?” And the good man replied, “You said, ‘Brother, as a minister, there are two occasions upon which you ought to preach Jesus Christ.’ I enquired, ‘What are those two occasions?’ You answered, “In season, and out of season.'” Well now, there are two occasions upon which we ought to praise God, “in season, and out of season.” Praise Him when you feel like praising; and when you do not feel like it, praise Him till you do. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2483.cfm

Apart

Sherry Christian Life Leave a comment

You who are King of kings and Lord of lords, we worship You. Before Jehovah’s awful throne we bow with sacred joy.

Sermon Text

“Lord, if it be Thy will, fulfill it in me”

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

Who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father… – Galatians 1:4

I believe that there would be much more persecution than there is if there were more real Christians; but we have got to be so like the world, that therefore the world does not hate us as once it did. If we would but be more just, more upright, more true, more Christlike, more godly, we should soon hear all the dogs of hell baying with all their might against us; but what of that? It would just be the fulfillment of the divine purpose, and God would be well pleased with us. Come, then, and let us fall back upon the omnipotent strength which ever slumbers within the divine will. Lord, if it be Thy will, fulfill it in me; if this be Thy purpose, accomplish it in me. Oh, what brave men and women those early saints were! I do not wonder that our friend cried out just now when I depicted the martyr; but there were tens of thousands of such holy men and women in the days of persecution. Have you never heard of her whom they set in a red-hot iron chair because she would not turn away from Christ, or of that other poor feeble woman, who was tossed on the horns of bulls, but who, nevertheless, spoke up right bravely for her Master as she came to die? Yes, and there have been boys and girls, who, for Christ’s sake, sooner than sin, have braved the most fearful deaths. Remember John Bunyan when he refused to give up preaching. They put him in prison, and said to him, “Mr. Bunyan, you can come out of prison whenever you will promise to cease preaching the gospel.” He said, “If you let me out of prison to-day, I will preach again to-morrow, by the grace of God.” “Well,” said they, “then you must go back to prison:” and he answered, “I will go back and stay there if need be till the moss grows on my eyelids; but I will never deny my Master.” This was the stuff of which the godly were made then; may the Lord make many of us to be like them, men and women who cannot and will not do that which is evil, but will, in the name of God, stand to the right and the true, come what may! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2483.cfm