promises

Because Christ Lives, We Live

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit 4 Comments

…because I live, ye shall live also. – John 14:19

Life is promised to Christ’s people. This does not mean their natural existence. That they have received from Adam, and, through their sin, it has become a curse to them, rather than a blessing. Should they remain unpardoned, the fact of continued existence will become to them the dreadful of calamities, since it must be an existence in God’s holy abhorrence of sin for ever; driven from every glimpse or hope of forgiveness.

The life which comes to us through Christ is of this sort-I trust you know it in your own hearts-it is life spiritual, given to us in regeneration. When the Holy Spirit quickens a dead soul, that dead soul then receives the life of Christ. No man is alive unto God spiritually, except through Christ. Because Christ lives, we live. When a dead soul gets into living contact with the living Saviour by the power of the Spirit, then it is that spiritual life begins. The very first evidence of spiritual life is trusting in Jesus, which shows that us the first symptom is alliance to Christ, the cause of the life must be somewhere here, namely, union with Christ. One of the very first outward signs is prayer-prayer to Christ, and that, again, rises from the fact that Christ gives us of His life, and then that life goes back again to Him…Do you not see, “Because I live, ye shall live”? Then no sinner ever will live spiritually apart from Christ. Though you and I cannot quicken them, yet we can preach the gospel to them, and faith cometh by hearing, and where faith is, there life is. It is no use trying to raise the dead by preaching the law to them. That is only covering them up fairly with a lie in their right hand; but preach of dying love and of rising power, to tell of pardons bought with blood, and to declare that Christ died a substitute for sinners-this is the hopeful way of bringing life to the dead. It is by such instrumentality that souls are brought to life eternal. Because Christ is alive, His elect in due time receives spiritual life by the power of the Holy Spirit, and, although once they were dead in sin, they begin to live unto righteousness.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

His Intercession for Saints and Sinners

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

Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. – Hebrews 7:25

Why, gaze awhile and you may think you see Him now. Just as the Jew saw Aaron, waving the censer, standing between the living and the dead, and staying the plague, even so is Christ standing at this hour between the living and the dead, and so moving the whole Deity to spare the guilty yet a little longer, whilst He makes intercession for them that they may live. And then comes His higher intercession for His elect, of whom He says, “I pray for them; I pray not for the world.” He lives, then, an actual life, of which you and I reap the daily fruits. Not a life of slumber and stillness, but an active, busy life, by which He continually dispenses gifts to us.

For this reason it is well to remind you, that, therefore, Jesus only lives as a man in one place. When we speak of Christ being found in every assembly of His people, we understand that of His presence in His Godhead and by His Holy Spirit, who rules on earth in this dispensation of the Spirit. But the man Christ can be but in one place, and He is now at the right hand of the Majesty on high. It is absurd, it is horrible both to faith and to reason, to say that Christ’s body is eaten, and that His blood is drunk in tens of thousands of places wherever priests choose to offer what they call “the mass.” A “mass” of profanity, indeed, it is! Our Lord Jesus Christ, as to His real, positive, corporeal presence, is not here. As to His flesh and His blood, He is not, and cannot be, here. He will be here one day, when He shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the trump of the archangel and the voice of God, but in His real person, He is now where His saints are-before the throne, whence by-and-bye He will descend. Meanwhile, His spiritual presence is our joy and our gladness, but His corporeal presence-a doctrine which our faith grasps and lays hold of-His corporeal presence is before the throne of God, and there He lives in proper flesh and blood as the Son of Man. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

I See My Lord, Not by Fancy, but by Faith

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

Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. – Romans 8:34

We are so very apt to mystify and becloud everything, and to suppose that Christ lives by His influence only, or lives by His Spirit. Brethren, He lives, the very man that died, as surely as He bled upon the tree, and in His own_proper person, from five actual wounds poured out the warm life-torrents of His heart, so surely does He actually live at this present moment in the midst of unnumbered hearts that sound His praise-the delightful object of the vision of the myriads of spirits who continually adore Him. He actually lives; He really and truly lives, as He lived here below… He is as busy now as He was when here. He proposed to Himself when He went away a certain work. “I go to prepare a place for you,” said He. He is preparing that place for us still. He intercedes, also, daily for His people. Oh! if your faith is strong enough, even now you can see Him distinctly standing before the throne of God, pleading His glorious merits. I think I see Him now as clearly as ever the Jews saw Aaron when he stood with his breast-plate on before the mercy-seat, for remember, the Jew never did see Aaron at all there, for the curtain was dropped, and Aaron was within the veil, and therefore, the Jew could only see him in his fancy. But I say I see Him as clearly as that, for I see my Lord, not by fancy, but by faith. There, where the veil is rent, so that He is not hidden from my soul’s gaze, I see Him with my name and yours upon His breast, pleading before God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

 

Jesus Lives

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

Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me: because I live, ye shall live also. – John 14:19

He always lived. There never was a time when He was not. “Before the hills were brought forth I was there,” saith He. The eternal Wisdom of God is from everlasting. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God. The same was in the beginning with God.” The life, however, which we think is intended in the text, is not His divine life, His life as Deity, but His life as man, His life as Mediator between God and man. In that life He lives. We needed not to be assured of His divine life: but seeing that, as a Mediator He died, it was necessary to assure us that as a Mediator He descended into the tomb; it is well for us to be assured that as a Mediator He rose again from His grave, and now lives at the right hand of the Father, no more to bleed and die.

Jesus Christ at this time lives in His proper manhood. He lives as to His soul: His human soul is as it was on earth. He lives as to His human body. He is a man before the throne; and I have no doubt that He wears the symbol, of course, mightily glorified, of his sufferings.

“Looks like a Lamb that had been slain.
And wears His priesthood still.”

That very Christ, who did once as a babe lie upon His mother’s breast, and who afterwards trod the waves of Gennesaret: who, after His resurrection, ate a piece of broiled fish and of honeycomb-that very Christ is now before the eternal throne. In very soul and body the man Christ Jesus is there. He lives. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

To See Jesus! ‘Tis Heaven Begun!

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

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. – 1 John 3:2

Blessed be God, there is this to be said, that he who has once seen Christ shall always see Him. The eye may sometimes gather dimness, but the light shall yet return. Where Christ hath opened a blind eye, blindness comes not back again. He takes the cataract totally away. He does not give a transient gleam of spiritual sight, and then permit the soul to go back into the darkness of its grave; but the sight which He gives is the sight of things eternal, a sight which shall strengthen and grow until at the last, when death shall take away every barrier which parts us from the unseen world, we shall know even as we are known and see even as we are seen. To see Jesus! ‘Tis heaven begun! And heaven consummated is but to see Jesus, no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face-still it is to see Jesus, to behold the King in His beauty. This, I say, is the sum and substance of life eternal, and it is true life here below.

Sometimes it is ours to speak to you of death, not necessarily with gloom, for it is to the Christian illuminated with rays of heavenly light; but here and now we desire to speak of life, the best and divinest life; we will forget the raven with its dusky wing, and see only the tender, gentle dove, bearing for each one of us the olive-branch of peace and victory.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

The Mark of the True Christian

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

“Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me; because I live, ye shall live also.”- John 14:19

This was, and is, the mark of the true believer, that he see Jesus. When Jesus was here among men, the world saw Him in a certain sense, but yet in truth it did not see Him at all. The world’s eye saw the outside of Christ-the flesh of the man Christ, but the true Christ the ungodly eye could not discern. They could not perceive those wonderful attributes of character, those delightful graces and charms, which made up the true spiritual Christ. They saw but the husk, and not the kernel; they saw the quartz of the golden nugget, but not the pure gold which that quartz contained. They saw but the external man; the real, spiritual Christ they could not see. But unto as many as God had chosen, Christ manifested Himself as He did not unto the world.

Now, to this hour, this is the mark of the true Christian: this is to be of the elect: this is the very badge and symbol of the faithful-they see Jesus. They look beyond the clouds. Other men see the cloud and the darkness, and they wist not what it is; but these men with more than eagle eye pierce through the clouds of mere sensual impressions, and they see the glory that was always His, even the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Beloved, have you ever seen Jesus with the eye of faith? Have you ever perceived the glory of His person, and the beauty of His character? Have you so perceived Jesus as to trust in Him? Have you been so enamoured of Him as to have yielded yourselves to be His servants for ever? Do you take up His cross? Do you avow yourselves to be His followers, come what may? If so, then are ye saved; but if ye see not Christ with your spirit, neither do ye know Him, nor shall ye enjoy a portion with Him.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3401.cfm

The Invitation for All Persons

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

“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, if any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.”-John 7:37

Pity expressed herself most plainly, for Jesus cried, which implies not only the loudness of His voice, but the tenderness of His tones. He entreats us to be reconciled. “We pray you,” says the Apostle, “as though God did beseech you by us.” What earnest, pathetic terms are these! How deep must be the love which makes the Lord weep over sinners, and like a mother woo His children to His bosom! Surely at the call of such a cry our willing hearts will come.

Provision is made most plenteously; all is provided that man can need to quench his soul’s thirst. To his conscience the atonement brings peace; to his understanding the gospel brings the richest instruction; to his heart the person of Jesus is the noblest object of affection; to the whole man the truth as it is in Jesus supplies the purest nutriment. Thirst is terrible, but Jesus can remove it. Though the soul were utterly famished, Jesus could restore it.

Proclamation is made most freely, that every thirsty one is welcome. No other distinction is made but that of thirst. Whether it be the thirst of avarice, ambition, pleasure, knowledge, or rest, he who suffers from it is invited. The thirst may be bad in itself, and be no sign of grace, but rather a mark of inordinate sin longing to be gratified with deeper draughts of lust; but it is not goodness in the creature which brings him the invitation, the Lord Jesus sends it freely, and without respect of persons. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

http://bible.christiansunite.com/Morning_and_Evening/chme1231.shtml