Christian Life

“It is I; be not afraid”

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, salvation 3 Comments

For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you. -Hebrews 13:5

If my testimony be worth aught, I have always found that when I am most distressed about circumstances that I cannot control, when my hope seems to flicker where it ought to flare, when the worthlessness and wretchedness of my nature obscure the evident of any goodness and virtue imparted to me or wrought in me, just then it is that a sweet spring of cool consolation bubbles up to quench my thirst, and a sweet voice greets my ear, “It is I; be not afraid”…Oh! believer, stay yourself upon God when you have nothing else to stay upon. Do not rely upon appearances; above all, do not listen to the suggestions of a murmuring, hardened spirit; do not credit the insinuations of the infernal fiend who, when he finds you downhearted, be it from sickness of body or anxiety of mind, is sure then to whisper some disparaging thoughts of God. What though the suggestion strikes your heart that the Lord has forsaken you, that your sins cannot be forgiven, that you will fall by the hand of the enemy, hurl it back. You know whence it came. Depend upon it, though heaven and earth go to wreck, God’s promise will stand. Should hell break loose, and demons innumerable invade this earth, they shall not go one inch beyond their tether. The chain that God has cast about them shall restrain them. Not an heir of heaven shall be left to the clutch of the destroyer. Nay, his head shall not lose a hair without divine permission. You shall come out of the furnace with not a smell of fire upon you. And being so eminently preserved, in such imminent peril, your salvation shall constrain you to bless God on earth, and bless Him to all eternity, with the deepest self-humiliation and the highest strains of gratitude and adoration. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3508.cfm

Poor and Yet Very Dear to Your Father

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises, The Father 9 Comments

…but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light. -Zecharih 14:7

No child of God can be very long without trouble of some kind or other, for sure it is that the road to heaven will always be rough…There is a pilgrimage, and a weary pilgrimage too, which must be taken before you can obtain entrance into those gates. Still, in all their trials, God’s people always find it true that at evening time it shall be light. Are you suffering from temporal troubles. You cannot expect to be without these. They are hard to bear. This, however, should cheer you, that God is as much engaged to succour and support you in your temporal, as He is in your spiritual, interests. Beloved, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Not a sparrow falls on the ground without your Father knowing it. Well, now, taking quite a material view of the question, you are of more value than many sparrows. You may be very poor, yet be very, very dear to your Father in heaven. Your poverty may reduce you to the utmost pinch, but that will be the time of your sweetest relief.

You may, my dear hearer, be so tried that you think nobody ever had such a trial. Well, then, your faith may look out for such a deliverance as nobody else ever experienced. If you have an excess of grief, you shall have the more abundant relief. If you have been alone in sorrow, you shall, by-and-bye, have a joy unspeakable, with which no stranger can intermeddle…Do cast your burden on God. Let me beseech those of you who love Him, not to be shy of Him. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3508.cfm

The Clear-Sightedness of God

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 3 Comments

“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear nor dark: But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night; but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light.”- Zechariah 14:6-7

As we read the Scriptures, we are continually startled by fresh discoveries of the magnificence of God. Our attention is fixed upon a passage, and presently sparklets of fire and glory dart forth. It strikes us; we are struck by it…Our text thus reveals to us in a remarkable manner the penetration, the discernment, the clear-sightedness of God. To our weak vision the current of human affairs is like twilight. It is not altogether dark, for it is broken with some gleams of hope. Nor is it altogether bright, for heavy masses of darkness intervene. It is neither day nor night. There is a mingle-mangle of good and evil, a strange confused mixture, wherein the powers of darkness contend with the powers of light. But it is not so with God. With Him, it is one clear day. What we think to be confusion, is order before His eyes. Where we see advance and retrogression, He sees perpetual progress. We full often bemoan our circumstances as altogether disastrous, while God, who seeth the end from the beginning, is working out His ordained purpose. Our God maketh the clouds to be the dust of His feet, and the winds to be His chariot. He sees order in the tempest and the whirlwind. When the bosom of earth heaves with earthquake, He hears music in every throb and when earth and heaven seem mingled in one wild disorder and storm, His hand is in the midst of all, so marking, that every particle of matter should be obedient to His settled laws, and that all things should work together to produce one glorious result. “Things are not what they seem.” Oh! how good it is for us to know that this world’s history is not so black and bad as to our dim senses it would appear. God is writing it out, sometimes with a heavy pen; but when complete, it will read like one great poem, magnificent in its plan, and perfect in all its details.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3508.cfm

Joy and Gladness and Thanksgiving and Melody

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

…joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody…Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away. -Isaiah 51:3, 11

“Joy and gladness shall be found therein; thanksgiving and the voice of melody.” You notice the doubles. The parallelism of Hebrew poetry, perhaps, necessitated them. Still, I am prone to remember how John Bunyan says that “all the flowers in God’s garden bloom double.” We are told of “manifold mercies,” that is, mercies which are folded up one in another, so that you may unwrap them and find a fresh mercy enclosed in every fold. Here we have “joy and gladness, thanksgiving and the voice of melody.” Just so; the Psalmist tells us of our soul being satisfied with “marrow and fatness”-two things. Elsewhere he speaks of “loving-kindness and tender mercy”-two things again. The Lord multiplies His grace. He is always slow to anger, but He is always lavish of His grace. See here, then, God will give His people an overflowing joy, an inexpressible joy, a sort of double joy, as though He would give them more joy than they could hold; joy and then gladness; thanksgiving and the voice of melody.

Oh! what a delightful thing must a visitation from God be to His Church! Without God, all she can do is to groan…Let God visit His Church, and there is sure to be thanksgiving and the voice of melody. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3514.cfm

Lord God, Grant It to Be So!

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

He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD -Isaiah 51:3

He says (hear it and marvel!) that He will make the wilderness like Eden. You know what Eden was. It was the garden of the earth in the days of primeval purity. Fruit and flower, lofty tree, and lively vegetation abounded there in profuse luxuriance. I know not how its groves and shrubberies were tenanted by graceful creatures and lovely birds, but I can well imagine that every sense of man was regaled by its unfailing charms. No thorns or thistles cursed the soil, no sweating brow with arduous toll forced the crops from barren sods. The land laughed with plenty. The river, branching into many heads, watered the garden. God Himself was pleased to water it with the mists, and to make the fruits grow, to swell in rich abundance, and early come to mature perfection. So the Lord says that when He visits His Church He will make these poor backsliders, these immature Christians, these nominal professors, like Eden. Oh! that the Lord would do it! Oh! that He would make them healthy, fruitful, prolific in fruitfulness, and spontaneously fruit-bearing, so that we should almost have need to say, “Hold, Lord!” just as Moses and Aaron did when the people brought in the offerings for the Tabernacle, until there were more than enough. Oh! that the Church of Christ may be enriched with all spiritual gifts, with all heavenly graces, with all that can minister to the welfare of the saints, to the advantage of the world, and to the glory of Him who created and redeemed us! God grant it may be so!~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3514.cfm

An Everlasting Consolation for the Church

Sherry Attributes of God, Christian Life, promises 1 Comment

He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD -Isaiah 51:3

The true way to comfort the Church is to build her synagogues, restore the desolation of former times, to sow her fields, plant her vineyards, make her soil fruitful, call out the industry of her sons and daughters, and fill them with lively, ardent zeal. There is an everlasting consolation for the Church in those grand doctrines of grace revealed to us in covenant, such as election, particular redemption, effectual calling, final perseverance, and the faithfulness of God. Resting in His love, God forbid that we should ever keep back these grand truths; they are the wells of salvation from which we rejoice to draw the water of life. But there are other truths besides these and we could not make full proof of our ministry if we overlooked the rain, even the former and the latter rain, which God gives in due season, or withholds in His chastening anger. I have often remarked that those persons who are always crying after the comfort that is to be derived from the stability of God’s purpose are strangely lacking in that present joy and jubilant song which revels in the goodness of the Lord, who clothes the pastures with flocks, and covers the valleys over with corn. I have also remarked that the best way to make a Christian man happy is to make him useful, ploughing the fields which God has watered, and gathering the fruits which He has ripened. A Christian Church never enjoys so much concord, love, and happiness as when every member is kept hard at work for God, every soul upon the stretch of anxiety to do good and communicate, every disciple a good soldier of the Cross, fighting the common enemy. Thus the Lord will comfort Zion, and He comforts her by turning her desert into a garden, and her wilderness into Eden. – C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3514.cfm

The Lord Comforts His Church

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

For the LORD shall comfort Zion: He will comfort all her waste places… -Isaiah 51:3

Beloved, we make but sorry comforters for God’s people unless Jehovah puts His own hand to the work. I have sometime tried to cheer up my brethren when they have been desponding, and I hope not without success; yet I have always felt that to relieve and refresh a desponding saint, I must fetch the remedies from my Master’s pharmacy. So, doubtless, those of you who have ever sought to obey the command, “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people,” must have found that it was not your word that could comfort Zion, nor your sympathy, but God’s truth applied by God’ Spirit, for this alone can comfort Zion. Oh! blessed promise! “The Lord will comfort Zion; He will comfort her waste places.” He that made the heavens will become the Comforter of His people. The Holy Ghost, who brooded over chaos, and brought order out of confusion; the mighty Spirit who came down at Pentecost in tongues like as of fire, with a sound like as a mighty rushing wind-that same blessed Spirit will come to the hearts of the members of His Church and comfort them. There are sorrows for which there is no solace within the reach of the creature; there is a ruin which it would baffle any mortal to retrieve. Happy for us that the Omnipotent comes to our aid. It is “He who telleth the number of the stars; calleth them all by their names”; who also “healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds!” Where He is, rolling the stars along, filling heaven with wonder as He creates majestic orbs, and keeps them in their pathways, making the comet fling its gorgeous light across space and startle nations, holding the burning furnace of the sun in the hollow of His hand; yet He stoops down to minister to a desponding spirit, and to pour the oil and wine of heavenly comfort into a poor distracted heart! Yes, it is Zion that is to be comforted, but it is Jehovah Himself who has promised to be her Comforter! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3514.cfm