Christian Life

Converted

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

“One born out of due time.”-1 Corinthians 15:8

It was necessary that Paul, as an apostle, should have seen the Lord. He was not converted at the time of Christ’s ascension; yet he was made an apostle, for the Lord Jesus appeared to him in the way, as he was going to Damascus to persecute the saints of God. When he looked upon himself as thus put in, as it were, at the end of the apostles, he spoke of himself in the most depreciating terms, calling himself, “one born out of due time.” Those who are acquainted with the Greek tongue know what a despicable term Paul here applied to himself,-as though he was scarcely a man at all,-at any rate, as the very last of the family, “born out of due time;” and not only the last, but also the very least, for he says, “I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” 

Paul proved that he was a true citizen of the New Jerusalem because he became, of all men, most zealous for Christ, zealous for the gospel, zealous for the winning of souls; he seemed to try to do all he could to undo the mischief he had wrought in the days of his unregeneracy, and to work with both his hands and all his heart to establish and extend the kingdom which once he tried to overthrow. O God, by Thy great mercy, cause another Paul to be born in this house of prayer! Thou canst do it; wilt Thou not bring to Thyself, by the power of the Eternal Spirit, some wild, threatening, blustering, blaspheming hater of Christ, lay him at the dear feet of the Crucified, and cause him to look up and live? Pray for this, dear Christian people. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2663.cfm

At the Day of Judgment

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God 1 Comment

After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. – Matthew 25:19

At the day of judgment you will not have to cast up a hurried account in the gross, but every item shall be read. Can you prove that? Yes. “For every idle word that man shall speak, he shall be brought unto account at the day of judgment.” Now, it is in the items that men go astray. “Well,” says one, “If I look at my life in the bulk, I am not very much ashamed, but it is those items, those little items-they are the troublesome part of the account, that one does not care to meddle with.” Do you know that all yesterday was made up of littles? And the things of to-day are all little, and what you do to-morrow will all be little things. Just as the tiny shells make up the chalk hills, and the chalk hills together make up the range, so the trifing actions make up the whole account, and each of these must be pulled asunder separately. You had an hour to spare the other day-what did you do? You had a voice-how did you use it? You had a pen-you could use that-how did you employ it? …When God comes to look into our hearts at last, He will not only look at the great but at the little; everything will be seen into, the pence sins as well as the pound iniquities-all must be brought against us, and an exact account given.

We must take our own trial before God’s eternal tribunal, and nothing can bias our Judge, or give Him an opinion for or against us, apart from the evidence. Oh, how solemn this will make the trial, especially if we have no blood of Christ to plead! The great Advocate will get His people an acquittal, through His imputed merits, even though our sin in itself would condemn them. But remember, that without Him we shall never be able to stand the fiery ordeal of that last dread assize. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0175.cfm

Held to Personal Account

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 1 Comment

After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them…For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. – Matthew 25:19,29

The man who has many talents requires much hard labor to use them all. He might make the excuse that he found five talents too many to put out in the market at once; you have only one; anybody can lend out his one talent to interest-it will cost you but little trouble to supply that; and inasmuch as you live, and inasmuch as you die, without having improved the one talent, your guilt will be exceedingly increased by the very fact that your talent was but little, and, consequently, the trouble of using it would have been but little too. If you had but little, God required but little of you; why, then, did you not render that? If any man holds a house at a rental of a pound a year, let it be never so small a house for the money, if he brings not his rent there is not one half the excuse for him that there would be if his rent had been a hundred pounds, and he had failed to bring it. You shall be the more inexcusable on account of the little that was required of you. Let me, then, address you, and remind you that you must be brought to account…In the day of judgment thy account must be personal; God will not ask you what your church did-He will ask you what you did yourself…Remember, it is not what your brethren are doing, but it is what you do that you will be called to account for at the bar of God; and each one of you will be asked this question, “What hast thou done with thy talent?” All your connection with churches will avail you nothing; it is your personal doings-your personal service towards God that is demanded of you as an evidence of saving grace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0175.cfm

God’s Glory from Man’s Littleness

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 2 Comments

And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability… – Matthew 25:15

God gives to men two talents, because in them very often He displays the greatness of His grace in saving souls. You have heard a minister who was deeply read in sacred lore; his wisdom was profound, and his speech graceful. Under his preaching many were converted. Have you never heard it not quite said, but almost hinted, that much of his success was traceable to his learning and to his graceful oratory? But, on the other hand, you have met with a man, rough in his dialect, uncouth in his manners, evidently without any great literary attainments; nevertheless, God has given that man the one talent of an earnest heart; he speaks like a son of thunder; with rough, stern language, he denounces and proclaims the gospel; under him hundreds are converted. The world sneers at him. “I can see no reason for all this,” says the scholar; “it is all rubbish-cant; the man knows nothing.” The critic takes up his pen, nibs it afresh, dips it in the bitterest ink he can find, and writes a most delightful history of the man in which he goes so far as to say, not that he sees horns on his head, but almost everything but that. He is everything that is bad, and nothing that is good. He utterly denounces him. He is foolish, he is vain, he is base, he is proud, he is illiterate, he is vulgar. What says the man himself? “Even so, O Lord; now must the glory be unto Thee for ever, inasmuch as Thou hast chosen the base things of this world, and the things that are not, to bring to naught the things that are.” So it seemeth that out of the little God sometimes winneth more glory than He doth out of the great; and I doubt not that He has made some of you with little power to do good, with little influence, and with a narrow sphere, that He may, in the last great day, manifest to angels how much He can do in a little space…Surely if in the little, man can honor himself as well as in the great, the Infinite, and the Eternal, can most of all glorify Himself when He stoopeth to the littleness of mankind. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0175.cfm

Joy, Joy Forever 

Sherry Christian Life 2 Comments

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

A Beautiful Variety

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, Sovereignty of God 4 Comments

Whatever the LORD pleases He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deep places. – Psalm 135:6

It was said that order is heaven’s first law; surely variety is the second; for in all God’s works, there is the most beautiful diversity. Look ye towards the heavens at night: all the stars shine not with the same brilliance, nor are they placed in straight lines, like the lamps of our streets. Then turn your eyes below; see in the vegetable world, how many great distinctions there are, ranging from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall, or the moss that is smaller still. See, how from the huge mammoth tree, that seems as if beneath its branches it might shade an army, down to the tiny lichen, God hath made everything beautiful, but everything full of variety…I doubt not it is the same, even in heaven, for there there are “thrones, and dominions, and principalities, and powers”-different ranks of angels, perhaps, rising tier upon tier. “One star differeth from another star in glory.” And why should not the same rule stand good in manhood? …Should minds, then, be alike? Should souls all be cast in the same fashion? Should God’s creation dwindle down into a great manufactory, in which everything is melted in the same fire and poured into the same mould? No, for variety’s sake, He will have one man a renowned David, and another David’s unknown armor bearer; He will have one man a Jeremy, who shall prophesy, and another a Baruch, who shall only read the prophecy; one shall be rich as Dives, another poor as Lazarus; one shall speak with a voice loud as thunder, another shall be dumb; one shall be mighty in word and doctrine, another shall be feeble in speech and slow in words. God will have variety, and the day will come when, looking down upon the world we shall see the beauty of its history to be mightily indebted to the variety of the characters that entered into it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0175.cfm

“I will give to this man…”

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

Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?- Romans 9:20,21

The Lord God will have men know that He has a right to do what He wills with His own…The worm is not to murmur because God did not make it an angel, and the fish that swims the sea must not complain because it hath not wings to fly into the highest heavens. God had a right to make His creatures just what He pleased, and though men may dispute His right, He will hold and keep it inviolate against all comers…”I will give to this man,” He says, “a mind so acute that he shall pry into all secrets; I will make another so obtuse, that none but the plainest elements of knowledge shall ever be attainable by him. I will give to one man such a wealth of imagination, that he shall pile mountain upon mountain of imagery, till his language seems to reach to celestial majesty; I will give to another man a soul so dull, that he shall never be able to originate a poetic thought.” Why this, O God? The answer comes back, “Shall I not do what I will with Mine own?” “So, then, the children being not yet born, neither having done good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, it was written, the elder shall serve the younger.” And so it is written concerning men, that one of them shall be greater than another; one shall bow his neck, and the other put his foot upon it, for the Lord hath a right to dispose of places and of gifts, of talents and wealth, just as seemeth good in His sight…Oh! I would meekly bow my head, and say, “My Lord, hast thou given me one talent? then I bless Thee for it, and I pray Thee bestow upon me grace to use it rightly. Hast Thou given to my brother ten talents? I thank Thee for the greatness of Thy kindness towards him; but I neither envy him, nor complain of Thee.” Oh! for a spirit that bows always before the sovereignty of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0175.cfm