Christian Life

Gladness in Jesus’ Name

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

“Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” – Acts 4:12

There is gladness in His very name:

“Exult all hearts with gladness
At sound of Jesus’ name;
What other hath such sweetness,
Or such delight can claim?”

What gladness He created when here below. His birth set the skies ringing with heavenly music and made the hearts of expectant saints to leap for joy. In after days a touch of the hem of His garment made a woman’s heart glad when she felt the issue of her blood staunched, and a word from His lips made the tongue of the dumb to sing. For Him to lay His hand upon the sick was to raise them from their beds of sickness and deliver them from pain and disease. His touch was gladness then, and a spiritual touch is the same now. To-day to preach of Him is gladness, to sing of Him is gladness, to trust Him is gladness, to work for Him is gladness, to have communion with Him is gladness. To come to His table, and there to feast with Him, is gladness; to see His image in the eyes of His saints is gladness; to see that image only as yet begun to form in the heart of a young convert is gladness. Everything about Him is gladness. All His garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia. Nothing comes within a mile of Him but what it makes you glad to think that He has been so near it. The very print of His foot has comfort in it, and the wounds in His hands are windows of hope. I have known some who have had to carry a cross for His dear sake, and they have kissed and hugged that cross, and gloried in their tribulations because they were borne for Him. Fellowship with Him has turned the bitterest potion into generous wine. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

Entering Into the Joy of Our Lord

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

…enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. – Matthew 25:21

My brethren, the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ now that He knows His beloved are securely His, and no longer the slaves of sin and heirs of wrath, is too great to be measured. He has redeemed unto Himself a people in whom His soul delights. For them the price is fully paid, for them the penalty has been completely endured, for them all chains are broken, and for them the prison house is razed to its foundation: for them hath He bruised the serpent’s head, for them hath He by death destroyed death, and led captive him that had the power of death, even the devil.

He now continues to receive into His joy the multitudes whom the Spirit brings to Him, for whom of old He shed His precious blood. You cannot conceive the gladness of Christ. If you have ever brought one soul to Christ you have had a drop of it, but His gladness lies not only in receiving them, but in actually being the author of salvation to every one of them. The Savior looks upon the redeemed with an unspeakable delight, thinks of what they used to be, thinks of what they would have been but for His interposition, thinks of what they now are, think of what He means to make them in that great day when they shall rise from the dead; and as His heart is full of love to them He joys in their joy, and exults in their exultation. Their heavens swell their Mediator’s heaven, and their myriad embodiments of bliss, each one reflects His own felicity, and so (speaking after the manner of men) increases it, for He lives ten thousand lives by living in them, and joys unnumbered joys in their joys. I speak with humblest fear lest in any word I should speak amiss, for He is God as well as man, but this is certain, that there is a joy of our Lord into which He will give His faithful ones to enter, a joy which He has won by passing through the shame and grief by which He has redeemed mankind. The oil of gladness is abundantly poured on that head which once was crowned with thorns. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

Serve the Lord with Gladness

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

…who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame… – Hebrews 12:2

In His work our great High Priest was anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows, but we also note that those who are His fellows do, in their degree, partake in this oil of gladness, and are enabled to feel joy in the work which is appointed them of the Lord. While our King is anointed with the oil of gladness it is also written of the virgin souls who wait upon His Church, “With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought, they shall enter into the King’s palace.” …The Lord loves to employ willing workmen. His army is not made up of pressed men, but of those whom grace has made volunteers. “Serve the Lord with gladness.” Our Lord does not set us task work, and treat us like prisoners in gaol, or slaves under the lash. I sometimes hear our life-work called a task. Well, the expression may be tolerated, but I confess I do not like it to be applied to Christian men. It is no task to me at any rate to preach my Master’s gospel, or to serve Him in any way. I thank God every day that “to me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.” …No man wins a race who has no heart in the running. In this respect the joy of the Lord is your strength, and as your Master was anointed with the oil of gladness in His work, so must you be. Yet, beloved fellow laborer, you will never be so glad in your work as He was in His, nor will you ever be able to prove that gladness by such self-denials, by such agonies, and such a death. He has proved how glad He was to save sinners, because “for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame.” Blessed Emanuel, Thou art justly anointed with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

The Lord’s Delight

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

Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows. – Psalm 45:7

The Son of God delighted in the work which His Father had given Him to do. This delight He declared as God, in the old eternity! “Lo I come; in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O God.” …We read that when the time came that He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. His frequent allusions to His own decease by a shameful death, all showed that He viewed with intense satisfaction the great object after which He was reaching. Once, indeed, His joy flowed over so that others could see it, when He said, “I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” “At that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit.” Let it never be forgotten that we must not expect to see in the life of Christ great ebullitions of manifest exultation, because He was sent on purpose to bear our sicknesses, and to be “stricken of God and afflicted.” …Now, if He had not possessed great stores of secret joy His spirit would have been famished for want of sustenance. You would have found Him constantly sighing and weeping; His words and tones would have become a terror to those around Him, and His whole appearance would have appeared melancholy and depressing to the last degree, whereas His manner was cheerful and attractive. Let the little children who thronged around Him bear witness to that. He was a man of sorrows, but He was not a preacher of sorrows, neither do His life or His discourses leave an unhappy impression upon the mind. The fact, probably, is, that He was both the greatest rejoicer and the greatest mourner that ever lived, and between these two there was an equilibrium of mind kept up, so that wherever you meet Him, with the exception of His agony in the garden, He is peaceful and serene…His peace is like a river, and His heart abides in the Sabbath of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

The Spirit’s Peculiar Office

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

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me; because the LORD hath anointed Me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound… – Isaiah 61:1

“And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; And shall make Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears: But with righteousness shall He judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth.” (Isaiah 11:2-4) The Holy Spirit also had a peculiar interest in Jesus’ resurrection, for He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.” He was “put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit.” That same Spirit wrought even more fully when the Lord ascended up on high, and led captivity captive; then, succeeding His ascension, the gifts of the cloven tongues of fire and the rushing mighty wind were witnessed by His disciples, for the Spirit of God was given abundantly to the Church in connection with the ascension of the Redeemer. Oh, how sweetly doth the Spirit co-operate with Christ at this very day, for it is He that takes of the things of Christ and reveals them unto us. He is the abiding witness in the Church to the truth of the gospel, and the worker of all our gifts and graces. Jesus gives repentance, but the Spirit works it; faith fixes upon Christ, but the Spirit of God first creates faith and opens the eye which looks to Jesus. The whole of this dispensation through it is the peculiar office of the Spirit of God to be revealing Christ to His people, and Christ in His people, and Christ in the midst of an ungodly and gainsaying generation, for a testimony against them. Blessed be the name of the Holy Spirit, that He is the divine anointing, and so proves His hearty assent to the great plan of redemption. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

The Holy Ghost’s Anointing

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

“Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.”-Psalm 45:7

We know that the anointing received by our Lord Jesus Christ was the resting of the Spirit of God upon Him without measure. We are not left to any guesswork about this, for in Isaiah 61 we are told, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord hath anointed Me.” Our Lord appropriated these very words to Himself when He went into the synagogue at Nazareth and opened the book at the place wherein these words are written, and said, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” The Apostle Peter also, in Acts 10:38, speaks of “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power”: so that we know both on Old and New Testament authority that the anointing which rested upon the Lord Jesus Christ was the unction of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, by the “oil of gladness” which we have before us in the text is intended the Holy Spirit Himself, or one of the gracious results of His sacred presence. The divine Spirit has many attributes, and His benign influences operate in divers ways, bestowing upon us benefits of various kinds, too numerous for us to attempt to catalogue them. Amongst these is His comforting and cheering influence. “The fruit of the Spirit is joy.” In Acts 13:52 we read, “The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.” Wherever He comes as an anointing, whether upon the Lord or upon His people, upon the Christ or the Christians, upon the Anointed or upon those whom He anoints, in every case the ultimate result is joy and peace. On the head of our great High Priest He is joy, and this oil of gladness flows down to the skirts of His garments. To the Comforter, therefore, we ascribe “the oil of gladness.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1273.cfm

Our Best Comfort

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

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. – John 14:26

There is no comfort in the world like a sight of Christ. Oh, brethren, if you are poor, and if the Holy Ghost shows you that Christ had not where to lay His head, what a sight for you! And if you are sick, and if the Holy Ghost shows you what sufferings Christ endured, what comfort comes to you! If you are made to see the things of Christ, each thing according to the condition which you are in, how speedily you are delivered out of your sorrow!

And then, if the Holy Ghost glorifies Christ, that is the cure for every kind of sorrow. He is the Comforter. Many years ago, after the terrible accident in the Surrey Gardens, I had to go away into the country and keep quite still. The very sight of the Bible made me cry. I could only keep alone in the garden; and I was heavy and sad, for people had been killed in the accident; and there I was, half dead myself; and I remember how I got back my comfort, and I preached on the Sabbath after I recovered. I had been walking round the garden, and I was standing under a tree. If it is there now, I should know it; and I remember these words: “Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Savior.” “Oh”, I thought to myself, “I am only a common soldier. If I die in a ditch, I do not care. The King is honored. He wins the victory;” and I was like those French soldiers in the old times, who loved the emperor; and you know how, when they were dying, if he rode by, the wounded man would raise himself up on his elbow, and cry once more, “Vive l’Empereur!” for the emperor was graven on his heart. And so, I am sure, it is with every one of you, my comrades, in this holy war. If our Lord and King is exalted, then let other things go which way they like: if He is exalted, never mind what becomes of us. God’s truth is safe, we are perfectly willing to be forgotten, derided, slandered, or anything else that men please. The cause is safe, and the King is on the throne. Hallelujah! Blessed be His name! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2213.cfm