confession of sin

Go to Christ Himself at Once

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation Leave a comment

Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. 

Behold, we come unto Thee; for Thou art the LORD our God. – Jeremiah 3:22

“Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.” Can you hear these words without emotion? Backslider! I pray thee take the wings of God’s love to fly back to Him with. But I hear you enquiring, Will He still receive me? Shall I be once more-

“To the Father’s bosom pressed,
Once again a child confessed.”

It shall be so. Does He not declare that He is God and changes not, and therefore you are not consumed? Rekindled are the flames of love in the backslider’s bosom when he feels all this to be true; he cries, “Behold, we come to Thee for Thou art the Lord our God.” I pray you, then, any of you who are conscious of gross derelictions of duty, and wanderings of heart, do not ask Moses to lead you back to Christ, he knows the way to Sinai’s flames, but not to Calvary’s pardoning blood. Go to Christ Himself at once. If you go to the law and begin to judge yourself, if you get the notion that you are to undergo a sort of spiritual quarantine, that you must pass through a mental purgatory before you may renew your faith in the Saviour, you are mistaken. Come just as you are, bad as you are, hardened, cold, dead as you feel yourselves to be, come even so, and believe in the boundless love of God in Christ Jesus. Then shall come the deep repentance; then shall come the brokenness of heart; then shall come the holy jealousy, the sacred hatred of sin, and the refining of the soul from all her dross; then, indeed, all good things shall come to restore your soul, and lead you in the paths of righteousness. Do not look for these first; that would be looking for the effects before the cause. The great cause of love in the restored backslider must still be the love of God to him, to whom he clings with a faith that dares not let go its hold. – C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1008.cfm

Return to Your Lord, Backslider

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, prayer, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God 1 Comment

…but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to Me, saith the LORD. – Jeremiah 3:1

It is sadly probable that there are some who once loved God very earnestly, but now they have declined and become grievously indifferent; God’s love to us never changes, but ours too often sinks to a low ebb. Perhaps some of you have become so cold in your affections that it is difficult to be sure that you ever did love God at all. It may be that your life has become lax, so as to deserve the censure of the Church. You are a backslider, and you are in a dangerous condition; yet, if there be indeed spiritual life in you, you will wish to return. You have gone astray like a lost sheep, but your prayer is, “seek Thy servant, for I do not forget Thy commandments.” Now, note well, that the cause which originated your love is the same which must restore it. You went to Christ as a sinner at first, and your first act was to believe the love of God to you when there was nothing in you that evidenced it. Go the same way again. Do not stop, my dear brother, to pump up love out of the dry well within yourself! Do not think it possible that love will come at your bidding. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. Think of the Lord’s unchanging grace, and you will feel the spring-time of love returning to your soul. Still doth the Lord reserve mercy for the sinful, still He waiteth to be gracious; He is as willing to receive you now that you have played the prodigal, as He was to have retained you at home in the bosom of His love. Many considerations ought to aid you, backslider, to believe more in the love of God than ever you did. For think what love it must be that can invite you still to return; you, who after knowing so much have sinned against light and knowledge; you, who after having experienced so much, have given the lie to your profession…But thus saith the Lord, “Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers, yet return unto Me.” What matchless love is this. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1008.cfm

Simply Asking

Sherry Attributes of God, confession of sin, prayer, salvation Leave a comment

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God… – James 1:5

No man will ask wisdom till he knows that he is ignorant. Come, dear hearer, confess your ignorance into the ear of God, who is as present here as you are; say unto Him, “Lord, I have discovered now that I am not so wise as I thought I was; I am foolish and vain. Lord, teach Thou me.” Make a full confession, and this shall be a good beginning for prayer.

Asking has also in it the fact the God is believed in. We cannot ask of a person of whose existence we have any doubt, and we will not ask of a person of whose hearing us we have serious suspicions. Who would stand in the desert of Sahara and cry aloud, where there is no living ear to hear? Now, my dear hearer, thou believest that there is a God. Ask, then!

There is in this method of approaching God by asking a clear sight that salvation is by grace. It does not say, “Let him buy of God, let him demand of God, let him earn from God.” Oh! no-“let him ask of God.” It is the beggar’s word. The beggar asks alms. You are to ask as the beggar asks of you in the street, and God will give to you far more liberally than ye to the poor. You must confess that you have no merit of your own. If you will not acknowledge that, neither will God hear your prayers; but come now with the acknowledgment of ignorance, with the confession of sin, and believing that God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him, and He will even now give you the wisdom which saves the soul. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0735.cfm

“Can I be saved?”

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, repentance, salvation Leave a comment

In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation… – Ephesians 1:13

I know the devil tells you that you have been too great a sinner. That cannot be. Perhaps he reminds you that you have been a scoffer, or have lived in immorality, or have been self-righteous, which is as heinous a sin as any other. Ah! well, but the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. A young woman wrote to me the other day- I do not know who she is, but she said, “I cannot tell anybody, but I have done so-and-so, a dreadful sin; indeed, if my mother knew it it would break her heart.” I do not know her, and therefore her mother will never know it from me, but she says, “Can I be saved?” Young woman, you can! She says that she is worse than Magdalene, for Magdalene did not know Christ when she was a sinner, but she did know the gospel, and yet sinned. Oh! well, if you are worse than Magdalene, Christ will be glorified in saving such a one as you are. Only come with all your sin about you and throw yourself at His feet. Trust Him! Trust Him! Do Him the honour to believe that He can save even such an abominable sinner as you have been. Though you have gone to the utmost extremity of human guilt, and looked over the gulf of endless misery, yet still believe Him; trust Him, and He will be as good as ever you can think Him to be; for when you think your highest thoughts of Him, He is higher than your highest thoughts, and can save even to the uttermost. – C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0802.cfm

If You Would Be Saved…

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, confession of sin, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God 2 Comments

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. – James 4:7,8

Submit thyself to the Word of God. Believe it to be true. Believing it to be true, yield thyself to its force. Does it accuse thee? Confess the accusation. Does it condemn thee? Plead guilty. Does it hold out hope to thee? Grasp it. Does it command thee? Obey it. Does it guide thee? Follow it. Does it cheer thee? Believe it. Submit thyself to Him who proclaims Himself the Savior of all such as will throw down the weapons of their rebellion and end their futile war by relying upon His power to save them…God speaks often to men through the still small voice of conscience. Open thine ear, then, and listen. Thy conscience can do thee no hurt; it may disturb thee, but it is well to be disturbed when peace leads on to death. He was a fool who killed the watch dog because it alarmed him when thieves were breaking into his house. If conscience upbraid thee, feel its upbraiding and heed its rebuke. It is thy best friend; faithful are its friendly wounds, but the kisses of a flattering enemy are deceitful.

“He that confesseth his sin shall find mercy.” Sinner, choose between one of two things; judge yourself, or be judged of God. If you will judge yourself and put in a plea of guilty, then will the Great Judge grant you forgiveness, but not else. Condemn yourself and you shall not be condemned. Confess the indictment to be true, for true it is, and to deny it is to seal your doom…When He brings you to submit, He has given you His grace. Submission to His divine will is the essence of salvation. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1276.cfm

Who Will Be Your Master, Sinner?

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, confession of sin, promises, repentance, salvation, the unbelieving life Leave a comment

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. – James 4:7

“No surrender” is the stubborn sinner’s motto. I have known men who would give their bodies to be burned sooner than yield to God. Their high stomach has stood out long against the Most High and they have been little Pharaohs till the Lord has brought them to their senses. “Must I yield, must I bow at His feet?”-they could not brook such humiliation. If the gospel had tolerated their pride and given them a little credit, they would have rejoiced in it; but to be tumbled in the dust and made to confess their own nothingness they could not bear. “Submit” is wormwood and gall to haughty sinners, yet must they drink the cup or die. Hear then, ye stout-hearted, you can never be saved unless you submit, and when you are saved one of the main points in your salvation will be that you have submitted. I desire to whisper one little truth in your ear, and I pray that it may startle you: You are submitting even now. You say, “Not I; I am lord of myself.” I know you think so, but all the while you are submitting to the devil. The verse before us hints at this. “Submit yourselves unto God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” If you do not submit to God you never will resist the devil, and you will remain constantly under his tyrannical power. Which shall be your master, God or the devil, for one of these must. No man is without a master: some power or other is paramount within us, either good or evil is supreme in our hearts; and if we will not be mastered by the good, the evil has already gained the sway. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1276.cfm

Yield to the Spirit’s Bidding

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

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. – Romans 8:14

Sometimes the Spirit of God whispers to you, “Retire to pray.” At such times enter your closet at once. Remember how David said, “When Thou saidst unto me, Seek ye My face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face Lord will I seek.” The Spirit of God will sometimes impel you to a duty which involves self-denial, which will take up much of your leisure, and will bring you no very great honor as a reward. Be not disobedient to His call but go about your work speedily. Say with the Psalmist, “I made haste and delayed not to keep Thy commandments.” The Spirit will at times urge us to deep repentance on account of faults in which we have been living; He will rebuke us for some ugly temper which we have indulged, or for some hard word which we have spoken against a brother, or because of the worldliness of mind into which we have fallen. Oh, brother, bestir thyself at such times, and examine and purge thy soul. Let a hint from the Holy Spirit be enough for thee…In this matter it is not so much your activity as your submission to the Holy Spirit which is needed; it is not so much your running as your willing to be drawn by Him. There is to be an activity in religion: we are to wrestle and to fight, but side by side with that we are to yield ourselves to the Spirit’s impulse, for it is He that worketh in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure; He striveth in us mightily, and if we will but resign ourselves, and no longer be obstacles in His divine way, He will carry us to greater heights of grace, and create in us more fully the likeness of Christ…Learn the sweetness of lying passive in His hand, and knowing no will but His: learn the blessedness of giving yourselves up entirely to His divine sway, for in so doing you will enter into heaven below. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1276.cfm