God Never Spoils His Children

February 1, 2025January 25, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And the Angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them… – Exodus 14:19

So the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground…And it came to pass, in the morning watch, the LORD looked down upon the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud, and He troubled the army of the Egyptians. – Exodus 14:22,24

Faith performs her greatest feats in the darkest places. These Israelites were to do what after all was a grandly glorious thing for them to do, -to march right down into the heart of the sea. What people ever did this before? Modern haters of miracles may say that they passed over the sands at an unusual tide, and that an extraordinarily strong wind drove back the water and left a passage, but that is not the notion of the Holy Spirit. He says by His servant Moses, “The floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.” It is also written, “But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.” The tribes went down into the dread valley which remained when the waters dried up, and they crossed over between two frowning walls of water. You and I would have needed great faith to have gone down into such an abyss as that, but they descended without fear. Moses lifting up his rod and the waters rolling apart to make them a passageway, with no fiery cloudy pillar in front of them, they calmly marched into the heart of the sea. That was a grand act of faith. This would not have been so clearly of faith had the way been made easier by miracle and token. I know some of you who are Christian people want to be always coddled and cuddled, like weakly babies…and be wheeled in a spiritual perambulator all the way to heaven, but your heavenly Father is not going to do anything of the sort. He will be with you, but He will try your manhood and so develop it. God never spoils His children… Beloved, you and I lose the enjoyments of religion and the comforts of hope in order that we may walk by faith and not by sight and may the more greatly glorify God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1793.cfm

Look Back!

January 31, 2025January 25, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises Leave a comment

And the Angel of God, who went before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud went from before them and stood behind them. – Exodus 14:19

Earnestly I desire you to think of this. If you cannot see the Lord bright before you, and you are very dull and heavy, then, I pray you, look back and see how the Lord has helped you hitherto. Sit not down with your eyes shut but look back! Steadily observe the past! What see you there? Loving-kindness and tender mercy, and nothing else. As I look back upon my own past life-and I think I am not one by myself-I cannot discover, even with the quick eye of selfishness, anything of which I can complain of my God. “Truly God is good to Israel.” “His mercy endureth for ever.” Not one good thing hath failed; He has never left me, nor forsaken me. I have received blessings through my joys, and even greater blessings through my sorrows. The Lord’s way has been all goodness, undiluted goodness, all the while. I look back and see the light of His presence shining like the sun at noon; it is as a morning without clouds, I am overwhelmed with the boundless bounty of my God. I am unable to conceive of anything more kind than the heart of God towards His unworthy child. Well, then, God is not far away, if we look backward, He is there. He has been mindful of us; He will bless us. He gave us mercies yesterday; and He is the same today and for ever. The blessings of last night we have not forgotten; the blessings of this morning, are they not still with us? The fountain will not fail: it has flowed too long for us to raise the question. If there be no light breaking in the east, behold, it is lighting up the western sky. The Lord is evidently still behind us, and it is enough; for we can sing, “The Lord liveth; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted.” “He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1793.cfm

Thy Rock, Thy Safeguard, Thy Watcher

January 30, 2025January 25, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises Leave a comment

And the Angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them… – Exodus 14:19

…the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. – Isaiah 58:8

The Angel of the Lord had removed, but it is added, He “removed and went behind them,” and He was just as close to them when He was in the rear, as when He led the van. He might not seem to be their guide, but He had all the more evidently become their guard. He might not for the moment be their Sun before, but then He had become their Shield behind. “The glory of the Lord was their reward.” The Lord may be very close to thee, dear child, when thou canst not see Him, perhaps closer than ever He was when thou couldst see Him. The presence of God is not to be measured by thy realization of it. When thou canst not tell that He is with thee at all, and thou art sighing and crying after Him, those very sighs and cries after Him are the holy fruit of His secret presence. It may be, the day shall come when thou shalt think that He was more near thee when thine eyes were filled with weeping after Him, than when thou didst take thine ease, and speak confidently.

That glorious Angel, shrouded in the clouds, stood with His drawn sword in the rear of Israel, saying to Pharaoh, “Thou darest not come further, thou canst not break in upon My chosen.” He lifted up His vast shield of darkness, and held it up before the tyrant king, so that he could not strike, nay, could not see. All that night his horses champed their bits but could not pursue the flying host. “They were as still as a stone till Thy people passed over, O Lord, till Thy people passed over whom Thou hadst purchased.” It is glorious to think that the Lord stood there, and the furious enemy was compelled to halt. Even thus the Lord remaineth with the dear child of God. Thou canst not see anything before thee to make thee glad, but the living God stands behind thee to ward off the adversary. He cannot forsake thee… He standeth fast as thy rock, steadfast as thy safeguard, sleepless as thy watcher, valiant as thy champion. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1793.cfm

All Trouble is Not Chastisement

January 29, 2025January 25, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them. – Exodus 14:19

It is true, and does happen, that the Lord often hides His face behind the clouds of dust that His own children make by their sins; but this is not always the case. When the consolations of God are small with you, you may generally conclude that there is some secret sin with you: and then it is your duty to cry, “Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me.” But in this case God was not punishing the Israelites for their sins, as He did on after occasions. He seems to have been very patient with their early murmurings, because they were such feeble folk, so unused to pilgrimage, and so unfit for anything heroic. Every trial was severe to the raw, undisciplined spirits of the tribes, and therefore the Lord winked at their follies. There was not a touch of the rod about this withdrawing of His presence from the van, not even a trace of anger; it was all done in loving-kindness and tender mercy, and no sort of chastisement was intended by it. So, dear child of God, you must not always conclude that trouble is sent because of wrath, and that the loss of conscious joy is necessarily a punishment for sin. Such thoughts will be a case of knives cutting your heart in pieces. Do not make for yourself a needless pain. All trouble is not chastisement; it may be a way of love for your enriching and ennobling. Upon the black horse of trouble, the Lord sends His messengers of love. It is a good thing for us to be afflicted; for thus we learn patience and attain to assurance. Shall the champion who is bidden to go to the front of the battle think that he is punished thereby? No, verily, my brethren: whom the Lord loveth He sets in the heat of the conflict, that they may earn the rarest honors. Great suffering and heavy labor are often rewards of faithfulness. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1793.cfm

Removed Yet Moved

January 28, 2025January 25, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed… – Exodus 14:19

God never leaves us, but we sometimes think He has done so. The sun shines on, but we do not always bask in its beams; we sometimes mourn an absent God-it is the bitterest of all our mourning. As He is the sum total of our joy, so His departure is the essence of our misery. If God does not smile upon us, who can cheer us? If He be not with us, then the strong helpers fail, and the mighty men are put to rout. If we see no cloud or flame, yet may we know that God is with us, and His power is around us. According to our text, “The angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed.” The chosen of the Lord may lose the manifested presence of God; and, indeed, often they may miss it in the particular form in which they have been accustomed to enjoy it… Aforetime everything had seemed bright, and we expected to go from strength to strength, from victory to victory, till we came unto the mount of God, to dwell for ever in His rest; but now before us on a sudden things look dark; we do not feel so sure of heaven as we were, nor so certain of perpetual growth and progress… Sometimes you also may imagine that God’s promise is failing you; even the word of God which you had laid hold upon may appear to you to be contradicted by your circumstances. Then your heart sinks to the depths, for “if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” …When the cloud of the divine glory is no longer seen in front it has gone behind, because it is more wanted there, and it is no loss after all. When the Lord hides His face for a moment, it is to make us value His face the more, to quicken our diligence in following after Him, to try our faith, and to test our graces… Oh, my Lord, if ever Thou dost leave me, forsake me not in the day of trouble. Yet what have I said? It is a day of trouble when Thou art gone, whatever my condition may be. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1793.cfm

Divinely Given Solace

January 27, 2025January 25, 2025Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises 2 Comments

“And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them, and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them: and it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these: so that the one came not near the other all the night.”-Exodus 14:19-20.

When the Israelites left the place of their bondage and came to the edge of the wilderness, a visible token of the Lord’s presence and leadership was granted to them. They saw high in the air a pillar, which by day might be compared to rising smoke, but at night became a flame of fire. Such displays on a small scale were usual in the march of armies, but this was of supernatural origin. Where it moved the people were to follow; it was to be their companion, that they might not be alone, their conductor, that they might not go astray. We have become familiar, by accounts of our own soldiery in Egypt, with the extreme danger of the oriental sun when men are marching over the fiery sand: this cloud would act as a vast umbrella tent, covering the whole of the great congregation, so that they could march without being faint with the heat. By night their canvas city was lighted up by this grand illumination. They could march as well by night as by day, for we are told at the close of the previous chapter (Ex. 13:21) that by night the Lord went before them “in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.” Might they not have said, “The Lord God is a sun and shield”? Did they not realize the fulfillment of the promise not yet spoken in words, “The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night”? This sacred symbol of the divine presence must have been a very great solace to them in those early days, when their pilgrim life was novel to them, and their newly found liberty was darkened by a terrible fear of recapture.

Beloved friends, God is always with those who are with Him. If we trust Him, He hath said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” There is a special and familiar presence of God with those who walk uprightly, both in the night of their sorrow, and in the day of their joy. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1793.cfm