promises

Be Faithful Reporters of Christ’s Message

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises 4 Comments

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. – 1 Corinthians 1:17

These disciples were to follow Christ that they might listen to Him, hear what He had to say, drink in His teaching, and then go and teach what He had taught them. Their Lord says, “What I tell you in darkness, speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.” If they will be faithful reporters of Christ’s message, He will make them “fishers of men.” But you know the boastful method nowadays is this: “I am not going to preach this old, old gospel, this musty Puritan doctrine. I will sit down in my study, and burn the midnight oil, and invent a new theory; then I will come out with my brand-new thought, and blaze away with it.” Many are not following Christ, but following themselves, and of them the Lord may well say, “Thou shalt see whose word shall stand, Mine or theirs.” Others are wickedly prudent, and judge that certain truths which are evidently God’s word had better be kept back. You must not be rough, but must prophesy smooth things. To talk about the punishment of sin, to speak of eternal punishment, why, these are unfashionable doctrines. It may be that they are taught in the Word of God, but they do not suit the genius of the age. We must pare them down. Brothers in Christ, I will have no share in this. Will you? O my soul, come not thou into their secret!

Jesus says, “Follow Me, I will make you fishers of men;” but if you go in your own way, with your own net, you will make nothing of it, and the Lord promises you no help in it. The Lord’s directions make Himself our leader and example. It is, “Follow Me, follow Me. Preach My gospel. Preach what I preached. Teach what I taught, and keep to that.” With that blessed servility which becomes one whose ambition it is to be a copyist, and never to be an original, copy Christ even in jots and tittles. Do this, and He will make you fishers of men; but if you do not do this, you shall fish in vain.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1906.cfm

Be True to the Command of Our Lord and Master

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

“If you love Me, keep My commandments. – John 14:15

We must not talk about our fellowship with Christ, or our being separated from the world unto Him, unless we make Him our Master and Lord in everything. Some public teachers are not true at all points to their convictions, and how can they look for a blessing? A Christian man, anxious to be useful, ought to be very particular as to every point of obedience to his Master. I have no doubt whatever that God blesses our churches even when they are very faulty, for His mercy endureth for ever. When there is a measure of error in the teaching, and a measure of mistake in the practice, He may still vouchsafe to use the ministry, for He is very gracious. But a large measure of blessing must necessarily be withheld from all teaching which is knowingly or glaringly faulty. God can set His seal upon the truth that is in it, but He cannot set His seal upon the error that is in it.

The Lord is very gracious and pitiful; but yet He is a jealous God. He is sometimes sternly jealous towards His people who are living in neglects of known duty, or in associations which are not clean in His sight. He will wither their work, weaken their strength, and humble them until at last they say, “My Lord, I will take Thy way after all. I will do what Thou biddest me to do, for else Thou wilt not accept me.” The Lord said to His disciples, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature: he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;” and He promised them that signs should follow, and so they did follow them, and so they will. But we must get back to apostolic practice and to apostolic teaching: we must lay aside the commandments of men and the whimseys of our own brains, and we must do what Christ tells us, as Christ tells us, and because Christ tells us. Definitely and distinctly, we must take the place of servants; and if we will not do that, we cannot expect our Lord to work with us and by us. Let us be determined that, as true as the needle is to the pole, so true will we be, as far as our light goes, to the command of our Lord and Master. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1906.cfm

At Jesus’ Feet – A Bound Apprentice

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God 3 Comments

And they straightway left their nets, and followed Him. – Matthew 4:20

At Jesus’ feet we must learn the art and mystery of soul-winning to live with Christ is the best education for usefulness. It is a great boon to any man to be associated with a Christian minister whose heart is on fire. The best training for a young man is that which the Vaudois pastors were wont to give, when each old man had a young man with him who walked with him whenever he went up the mountainside to preach, and lived in the house with him, and marked his prayers and saw his daily piety. This was a fine instruction. Was it not? But it will not compare with that of the apostles who lived with Jesus Himself, and were His daily companions. Matchless was the training of the twelve. No wonder that they became what they were with such a heavenly tutor to saturate them with His own spirit! And now today His bodily presence is not among us; but His spiritual power is perhaps more fully known to us than it was to those apostles in those two or three years of the Lord’s corporeal presence. There be some of us to whom He is intimately near. We have leaned our head upon His bosom and have enjoyed fellowship with Him such as we could not have with any of our own kith and kin. This is the surest method of learning how to do good. Live with Jesus, follow Jesus, and He will make you fishers of men. See how He does the work, and so learn how to do it yourself. A Christian man should be a bound apprentice to Jesus to learn the trade of the Savior. We can never save men by offering a redemption, for we have none to present; but we can learn how to save men by warning them to flee from the wrath to come and setting before them the one great effectual remedy. See how Jesus saves, and you will learn how the thing is done: there is no learning it anyhow else. Live in fellowship with Christ, and there shall be about you an air and a manner as of one who has been made in heart and mind apt to teach, and wise to win souls.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1906.cfm

To Become Master-fishers

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, salvation, The Holy Spirit 5 Comments

And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after Me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. – Mark 1:17

We are like the fishes, making sin to be our element; and the good Lord comes, and with the gospel net He takes us, and He delivers us from the life and love of sin. But He has not wrought for us all that He can do, nor all that we should wish Him to do, when He has done this; for it is another and a higher miracle to make us who were fish to become fishers-to make the saved ones saviours-to make the convert into a converter-the receiver of the gospel into an imparter of that same gospel to other people. I think I may say to every person whom I am addressing: If you are saved yourself, the work is but half done until you are employed to bring others to Christ. You are as yet but half formed in the image of your Lord. You have not attained to the full development of the Christ-life in you unless you have commenced in some feeble way to tell to others of the grace of God: and I trust that you will find no rest to the sole of your foot till you have been the means of leading many to that blessed Savior who is your confidence and your hope. His word is-Follow Me, not merely that you may be saved, nor even that you may be sanctified; but, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Be following Christ with that intent and aim; and fear that you are not perfectly following Him unless in some degree He is making use of you to be fishers of men. The fact is, that every one of us must take to the business of a mancatcher. If Christ has caught us, we must catch others. If we have been apprehended of Him, we must be His constables, to apprehend rebels for Him. Let us ask Him to give us grace to go a-fishing, and so to cast our nets that we may take a great multitude of fishes. Oh that the Holy Ghost may raise up from among us some master-fishers, who shall sail their boats in many a sea, and surround great shoals of fish! ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1906.cfm

What Christ Can Make of Us

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

“And Jesus saith unto them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”-Matthew 4:19.

When Christ calls us by His grace we ought not only to remember what we are, but we ought also to think of what He can make us. It is, “Follow Me, and I will make you.” We should repent of what we have been, but rejoice in what we may be. It is not “Follow Me, because of what you are already.” It is not “Follow Me, because you may make something of yourselves;” but, “Follow Me, because of what I will make you.” Verily, I might say of each one of us as soon as we are converted, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” It did not seem a likely thing that lowly fishermen would develop into apostles; that men so handy with the net would be quite as much at home in preaching sermons and in instructing converts. One would have said, “How can these things be? You cannot make founders of churches out of peasants of Galilee.” That is exactly what Christ did; and when we are brought low in the sight of God by a sense of our own unworthiness, we may feel encouraged to follow Jesus because of what He can make us. What said the woman of a sorrowful spirit when she lifted up her song? “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes.” We cannot tell what God may make of us in the new creation, since it would have been quite impossible to have foretold what He made of chaos in the old creation. Who could have imagined all the beautiful things that came forth from darkness and disorder by that one fiat, “Let there be light?” And who can tell what lovely displays of everything that is divinely fair may yet appear in a man’s formerly dark life, when God’s grace has said to him, “Let there be light?” O you who see in yourselves at present nothing that is desirable, come you and follow Christ for the sake of what He can make out of you. Do you not hear His sweet voice calling to you, and saying, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men?”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1906.cfm

A Gospel for the Despairing

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

To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death… – Luke 1:79

Have you in your despair made a league with death, and a covenant with hell? Thus saith the Lord, “Your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand;” for the Lord has come forth, and visited you in the person of His dear Son to deliver the captive, and save those who are appointed unto death. Knowing your guilt, the Lord visits you and bids you look up. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Look and live; look, and be delivered at once, even from the horrible deathshadow which now broods over you. I do delight to think of this tender mercy of God to those who are lost. There are lost that shall be found, and last that shall be first. You seem forgotten of God, left out of the register of hope, but yet to you has Jesus come-“to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Is not this tender mercy? If he had not come to shine on such I should never have been saved. A gospel for the cheerful would never have met my case; I wanted a gospel for the despairing. I know some here who must have perished if the gospel had only been suitable to those who are of good character, and have the beginnings of natural religion within them. Only a sinner’s Savior would have suited some of you, or, indeed, any of us. As the good Samaritan did to the wounded man, “he came where he was,” so did Jesus come to us in our ruin. The benefactor of the wounded did not stand and say to him, “Come here, and get on my beast, and he shall carry you to the inn.” But he went to him when he was lying half dead, and therefore helpless; and he poured the oil and wine into his wounds while the poor wretch could not move an inch, nor stir hand or foot. He bound up his wounds, and then set him on his own beast, and took him to the inn. This is tender mercy; and in this fashion Jesus deals with us. He does everything for us from the very beginning. He is Alpha, even as He must be Omega. Does not this show the tender mercy of our God, that He does come to us in the darkness, and under the grim shadow of death, and there and then reveals His love to us?~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1907.cfm

Of Such the Savior Has Come to Save

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

To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. – Luke 1:79

Our God visits us when we are in darkness; when we are in such darkness as to know nothing, see nothing, believe nothing, hope nothing; even then the Lord’s mercy comes to us. Is not this tenderness? “Educate a man up to a certain point,” says one, “and then we may hope that God’s grace will visit him.” Educate him by all means, but have hope that God may visit even those who have no education of any sort. “Follow the advance of civilization,” cries one, “and do not risk your missionaries among barbarians.” Not so; our marching orders are, “Preach the gospel to every creature.” The gospel is to precede and produce civilization. To them that sit in darkness, the Lord is pleased to send the Dayspring from on high. To send light where there is light is superfluous. Have we not a proverb about sending coals to Newcastle? God sendeth not grace to us because we have already something which may be viewed as prevenient and preparatory; but the prevenient and the preparatory are of His grace, and He comes in love to bring these with Him, to those who as yet know nothing of His light and life. They are in the dark, and He creates their day.

Did you notice that it is said “to those that sit in darkness?” This is more than being in the dark. The man who sits in darkness does so because he feels that his case is hopeless, and therefore he forbears all further action. A poor benighted traveler has wandered this way and that to find a track, but it is so dark that he cannot perceive his road; and so at last he embraces the rock for want of a shelter, crouching to the earth in despair. It is a part of the tender mercy of our God that He visits those who despond and are motionless in a dread inactivity. Those who have lost hope are lost indeed, and such the Savior has come to save. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1907.cfm