promises

All in the Family of God

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

Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him? – James 2:5

The fatherhood of God is common to all His children. Ah! Little-faith, you have often looked up to Mr. Great-heart, and you have said, “Oh that I had the courage of Great-heart, that I could wield his sword and cut old giant Grim in pieces! Oh that I could fight the dragons, and that I could overcome the lions! But I am stumbling at every straw, and a shadow makes me afraid.” List thee, Little-faith. Great-heart is God’s child, and you are God’s child too; and Great-heart is not a whit more God’s child than you are. David was the son of God, but not more the son of God than thou. Peter and Paul, the highly-favored apostles, were of the family of the Most High; and so are you. You have children yourselves; one is a son grown up, and out in business, perhaps, and you have another, a little thing still in arms. Which is most your child the little one or the big one? “Both alike,” you say. “This little one is my child near my heart and the big one is my child too.” And so the little Christian is as much a child of God as the great one.

“This cov’nant stands secure,
Though earth’s old pillars bow;
The strong, the feeble, and the weak,
Are one in Jesus now;”

One may have more grace than another, but God does not love one more than another. One may be an older child than another, but he is not more a child; one may do more mighty works, and may bring more glory to his Father, but he whose name is the least in the kingdom of heaven is as much the child of God as he who stands among the king’s mighty men. Let this cheer and comfort us, when we draw near to God and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

Nothing Can Divide Us from His Heart

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

And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. – Galatians 3:29

Permit me to draw your attention to one encouraging thought that may help to cheer the downcast and Satan-tempted child of God. Sonship is a thing which all the infirmities of our flesh, and all the sins into which we are hurried by temptation, can never violate or weaken. A man hath a child; that child on a sudden is bereaved of its senses; it becomes an idiot. What a grief that is to a father, for a child to become a lunatic or an idiot, and to exist only as an animal, apparently without a soul! But the idiot child is a child, and the lunatic child is a child still; and if we are the fathers of such children they are ours, and all the idiocy and all the lunacy that can possibly befall them can never shake the fact that they are our sons. Oh! what a mercy, when we transfer this to God’s case and ours! How foolish we are sometimes-how worse than foolish! We may say as David did, “I was as a beast before Thee.” God brings before us the truths of His kingdom; we cannot see their beauty, we cannot appreciate them; we seem to be as if we were totally demented ignorant, unstable, weary, and apt to slide. But, thanks be unto God, we are His children still! And if there be anything worse that can happen to a father than his child becoming a lunatic or an idiot, it is when he grows up to be wicked. Ungodly, vile, debauched-a blasphemer! But mark, brethren: if he be a child he cannot lose his childship, nor we our fatherhood, be he who or what he may… The prodigal was his father’s son, when he was amongst the harlots, and when he was feeding swine; and God’s children are God’s children anywhere and everywhere, and shall be even unto the end. Nothing can sever that sacred tie, or divide us from His heart. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

Sonship

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

…Our Father which art in heaven… – Matthew 6:9

Here is sonship-“Our Father which art in heaven.” How are we to understand this, and in what sense are we the sons and daughters of God? Some say that the Fatherhood of God is universal, and that every man, from the fact of his being created by God, is necessarily God’s son, and that therefore every man has a right to approach the throne of God, and say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” …I have never been able to see that creation necessarily implies fatherhood. I believe God has made many things that are not His children… He made the angels, who stand in an eminently high and holy position, are they His children? “Unto which of the angels said He at any time, thou art My son?” I do not find, as a rule, that angels are called the children of God; and I must demur to the idea that mere creation brings God necessarily into the relationship of a Father… Those who can say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” are something more than God’s creatures: they have been adopted into His family. He has taken them out of the old black family in which they were born; He has washed them. and cleansed them, and given them a new name and a new spirit, and made them “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;” and all this of His own free, sovereign, unmerited, distinguishing grace. And having adopted them to be His children, He has in the next place, regenerated them by the Spirit of the living God. He has “begotten them again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” and no man hath a right to claim God as his Father, unless he feeleth in his soul, and believeth, solemnly, through the faith of God’s election, that he has been adopted into the one family of which is in heaven and earth, and that he has been regenerated or born again. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0213.cfm

He Will Fulfill His Divine Decree

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

And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel. – Malachi 1:5

Those who now despise the messages which are sent to them will, at last, be left to their own devices. “My Spirit shall not always strive with man,” saith the Eternal God; and continual rejection will, at last, end in the total withdrawal of His presence, and the eternal ruin of all who have resisted Him.

But notwithstanding the rejection of men, He will fulfill the divine decree. Man’s obstinacy shall not frustrate the purpose of God; and the things which He hath foreordained shall surely come to pass. In this shall be clear evidence that the Spirit of the Lord was not straitened. Not one of God’s chosen shall be suffered to continue in the way to ruin; they shall all be effectually called, and enabled to embrace Christ as He is freely preached to them in the gospel.

He will glorify Christ, and prepare a people to welcome His advent. The gospel shall be preached among all nations, and out of every tribe and people witnesses shall be gathered to await the glorious appearing of the victorious Christ, which cannot be long delayed. Then it shall be soon how grandly the Spirit of the Lord has perfected both the number and the character of the church, which, like a chaste virgin, shall be presented to the Lamb, as the reward of His agony and intercession. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2218.cfm

Let the Lord Do His Work in His Own Way

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

… I will pardon all their iniquities … – Jeremiah 33:8

A great many persons are guilty of thinking the Spirit of God to be straitened when they fancy that He must always work in one way. When I am seeing persons who come forward to confess their faith, I find they often begin by telling me how they were brought low under a sense of sin; and I like that old-fashioned way of conversion. But when I find one beginning by saying, “The Lord met me, and filled my heart with joy and gladness under a sense of pardon, almost before I had any sense of sin, and the sense of sin followed after,” I say to myself, “Let the Lord do His work in His own way.” I am not going to make a pattern, and lay them all on it, and say that they must all be just that length, or else be stretched out a bit, or be cut shorter. No; let the Lord save His own people in His own way; and if one is made to go down to the dark dungeon of law-work, and gets whipped till he has not a bit of whole skin in his soul, I hope that it will do him good. But if another is gently led to Christ, and does not know that there is a rod, but through love and kindness is led to rejoice in his Savior, I trust that he will remember it, and be glad all his days. Conversions are not run into moulds. You cannot get a gross of conversions like a gross of steel pens. Each living child is different from any other living child. A great painter never paints exactly the same picture twice. There is always a difference somewhere, be it ever so slight; and when there is a work for eternity done in a church, it is done in very varied ways. If we begin to tie the Lord down to one way of work, we shall make a great mistake.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2218.cfm

 

However Weak and Feeble You May Be…

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

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. – 2 Corinthians 2:10

Dear friends, do you not think that we also treat the Spirit of God as though He were straitened when we imagine that our weakness hinders His working by us. “Oh,” says one, “I have no doubt that God can bless a great many by you!” Well, dear fiend, if you knew what I am often obliged to feel of myself, you would never talk so. I am the weakest of you all, in my own apprehension. Another says, “I know that I am inferior in ability, in knowledge, in opportunity.” Just so, dear friend; and therefore you suppose that the Spirit of God cannot use you. Do you not see, that, though you think such a confession is an evidence of humility, you are straitening the Spirit of God? However weak and feeble you may be, He can use you. If you think that He cannot, you deprive Him of power in your apprehension. It is not yourself, you see, that you are lowering, you are really lowering the power of God. He can use a person who is very insignificant, very obscure, very unlearned, very feeble. Nay, He delights to do this; and He makes even those that are strong feel weak before He uses them, so that they say, “When I am weak, then am I strong.” He will use empty vessels, and if you do not want emptying because you are empty already, then there is one little thing that needs not to be done, and God can begin with you at once. There is nothing in you-nothing. Now, if God will use you, He will manifestly have all the glory. Believe that He can use you, and get to work, and do something. Tell out His gospel. Tell it over and over again. Tell it where you have told it, or where you have never told it, and believe that God can use you; AND HE WILL! Else, if you say, “He cannot use me,” I shall put the question to you again, “Is the Spirit of the Lord straitened?”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2218.cfm

The Spirit of God Can Save

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

Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us… – Ephesians 3:20

Oh, for a mighty belief in that God who “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us”; and that power is the Holy Ghost, who cannot be straitened!

Why, then, should we not come up to the house of God with the prayer, “O Lord, work mighty marvels”? Is He not the God that doeth great wonders? Should we not expect Him to do large things? I know some will say, “Well, if I were to see a great many converted, I should be afraid that they would, many of them, go back.” But my experience tells me that there is no reason to believe that when many are converted there are more mistaken persons in the number, in proportion, than when few are converted. In fact, I think that I have noticed that the more that are received into the church the better is the quality. And the reason is this-that, when few are coming, there is a strong temptation to accept them with less discretion; but, when there are a great many, we can afford to be somewhat more rigid; so that the more the merrier, and the more the sounder. I think that it is often the case. Let us believe that the Spirit of God can save a parish, can save a city, can shake London from end to end. Oh, that God would enlarge the capacity of our faith! “According to your faith be it unto you.” But we have not more than sixpenny-worth of faith; and when we get as much as that represents, we think that we are getting rich; and yet there are mines of untold wealth of the grace of God to be had. Oh, that we had the faith wherewith to take possession of them! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2218.cfm