promises

Recumbency on the Truth

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

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. – Proverbs 3:5

Recumbency on the truth was the word which the old preachers used. You will understand that word. Leaning on it; saying, “This is truth, I trust my salvation on it.” Now, true faith, in its very essence rests in this-a leaning upon Christ. It will not save me to know that Christ is a Saviour; but it will save me to trust Him to be my Saviour. I shall not be delivered from the wrath to come by believing that His atonement is sufficient, but I shall be saved by making that atonement my trust, my refuge, and my all. The pith, the essence of faith lies in this-a casting one-self on the promise. It is not the lifebuoy on board the ship that saves the man when he is drowning, nor is it his belief that it is an excellent and successful invention. No! He must have it around his loins, or his hand upon it, or else he will sink. To use an old and hackneyed illustration: suppose a fire in the upper room of a house and the people gathered in the street. A child is in the upper story: how is he to escape? He cannot leap down-that were to be dashed to pieces. A strong man comes beneath, and cries, “Drop into my arms.” It is a part of faith to know that the man is there; it is another part of faith to believe that the man is strong; but the essence of faith lies in the dropping down into the man’s arms. That is the proof of faith, and the real pith and essence of it. So, sinner, thou art to know that Christ died for sin; thou art also to understand that Christ is able to save, and thou art to believe that; but thou art not saved, unless in addition to that, thou puttest thy trust in Him to be thy Saviour, and to be thine for ever. As Hart says in his hymn, which really expresses the gospel-

“Venture on Him, venture wholly;
Let no other trust intrude;
None but Jesus
Can do helpless sinners good.”

~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0107.cfm

True Faith Gives Full Assent to the Scriptures

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

We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; _ 2 Corinthians 4:13

I may know a thing, and yet not believe it. Therefore assent must go with faith: that is to say, what we know we must also agree unto, as being most certainly the verity of God. Now, in order to faith it is necessary that I should not only read the Scriptures and understand them, but that I should receive them in my soul as being the very truth of the living God, and I should devoutly with my whole heart receive the whole of the Scripture as being inspired of the Most High, and the whole of the doctrine which He requires me to believe to my salvation. You are not allowed to halve the Scriptures, and to believe what you please; you are not allowed to believe the Scripture with a half-heartedness, for if you do this wilfully, you have not the faith which looks alone to Christ. True faith gives its full assent to the Scriptures; it takes a page and says, “No matter what is in the page, I believe it;” it turns over the next chapter and says, “Herein are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable do wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their destruction; but hard though it be, I believe it.” It sees the Trinity; it cannot understand the Trinity in Unity, but it believes it. It sees an atoning sacrifice; there is something difficult in the thought, but it believes it; and whatever it be which it sees in revelation, it devoutly puts its lips to the book, and says, “I love it all; I give my full, free and hearty assent to every word of it, whether it be the threatening or the promise, the proverb, the precept, or the blessing. I believe that since it is all the Word of God it is all most assuredly true.” Whosoever would be saved must know the Scriptures, and must give full assent unto them.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0107.cfm

Know What You Believe

Sherry Christian Life, promises, prophecy, salvation 4 Comments

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me. – John 5:39

The first thing in faith is knowledge. A man cannot believe what he does not know. That is a clear, self-evident axiom. If I have never heard of a thing in all my life, and do not know it, I cannot believe it. And yet there are some persons who have a faith like that of the fuller, who when he was asked what he believed, said, “I believe what the Church believes.” “What does the Church believe?” “The Church believes what I believe.” “And pray what do you and the Church believe?” “Why we both believe the same thing.” Now this man believed nothing, except that the Church was right, but in what he could not tell. It is idle for a man to say, “I am a believer,” and yet not to know what he believes; but yet I have seen some persons in this position…They believe they intend to go to chapel next Sunday; they intend to join that class of people; they intend to be very violent in their singing and very wonderful in their rant; therefore they believe they shall be saved; but what they believe they cannot tell. Now, I hold no man’s faith to be sure faith unless he knows what he believes. If he says, “I believe,” and does not know what he believes, how can that be true faith? The apostle has said, “How can they believe on Him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without a preacher? and how can they preach except they be sent?” We believe that every doctrine of God’s Word ought to be studied by men, and that their faith should lay hold of the whole matter of the Sacred Scriptures, and more especially upon all that part of Scripture which concerns the person of our all-blessed Redeemer. There must be some degree of knowledge before there can be faith. “Search the Scriptures,” then, “for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Christ;” and by searching and reading cometh knowledge, and by knowledge cometh faith, and through faith cometh salvation.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0107.cfm

“This is the Way, This is the Way!”

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

…This is the way, walk ye in it… _ Isaiah 30:21

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me. – John 14:6

Definite instruction is given. This may not suit the Broad School, but it is exactly what the anxious seeker needs. This definite instruction may also be said to be a special correction. When the voice behind says, “This is the way,” it does as good as say that the opposite path is not the way; for there is only one way to heaven, and there never will be two; and when men hear a voice saying, “This is the way,” it does in effect remind them that the opposite is not the way. If ye are going the reverse of the right way, turn ye from it, and ye shall live. How much we ought to bless God that the gospel comes in as a corrective, kills the false and introduces us to the true. May falsehood be slain within us, and truth reign there for ever. May we leave all other roads, since the Lord has said of one road only, “This is the way.”

if we have already believed it to be the way we are strengthened in that conviction. Hearing the mysterious word declaring again and again, “This is the way,” men grow to believe the truth of God’s word, and out of that by-and-by there is begotten a living faith in a living Saviour. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1672.cfm

The Potent Spoken Word

Sherry Attributes of God, promises, salvation, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers. Isaiah 30:20

It is absolutely necessary that the potent word should be spoken and should be heard. For the man had seen his teachers, but they had not wrought him any good. How often the Lord seems to put us ministers right up in the corner with our faces to the wall, till we are little in the eyes of our hearers and little in our own eyes. He does so with me, and while I can glorify His name and bless Him abundantly for the many that are brought to Christ, yet I never take the slightest congratulation to myself about it, for what am I but the driest and most barren stick that there is in all my Master’s garden apart from His watering? If sinners had nothing to save them but us poor preachers, not one of them would be brought up from death and hell. Sinners would laugh at us as simpletons if God were not with us: they do so as it is, and I do not wonder at it, because there is enough in us that deserves to be laughed at. They are ready to despise us, and we cannot be broken-hearted if they do, for we ourselves used in former days to despise the servants of God, and if we do not do so now, it is because the grace of God has made a change in us: we cannot expect better treatment than we ourselves rendered to better men when they pleaded with us. The word behind us is needful, that “still small voice” which no mortal man can speak, but only God Himself, that inward monition of the conscience, that touching language of the heart which is as much beyond the power of man as to make a world or breath life into an image of clay. Therefore pray ye mightily to the blessed Spirit that He may breathe on men and save them, and that the word of God may still follow and pursue them till they turn from the way of transgression.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1672.cfm

Men Delay But God Does Not

Sherry Attributes of God, promises, salvation, The Holy Spirit 3 Comments

And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.  – Isaiah 30:21

A man may go steadily plodding on in his course of ungodliness and hear no such word of pleading, but how often it has happened that there has been a temptation of a more than usually forceful character, and the traveller was about to turn to the right, and then, at that precise moment, he has heard the word of God behind him giving him warning. His feet had almost gone; his steps had well-nigh slipped, but the word of the Lord upheld him, and he went not into the deadly sin. Or it may be it is what I have described as a left-handed sin: the man was carried on to an action which, if he had actually performed it, would have involved his sure destruction; but just as he was about to turn down Deadman’s Lane there came a voice behind him, “Return, return.” Often it is so, and even if the man does not return and seek the right way, but keeps steadily on as carelessly as ever, still he is slackening his speed, and he dares not take that left-hand turning into gross sin which he would have followed if the word had not checked him. Even where the Spirit of God does not save a man it keeps him from many a sin; and when men rebel against the light and will not yield to it, yet still that light has a restraining influence over them of which they may be unconscious. Those who watch them know that if that bit and bridle had not been supplied by the word they would have gone to an excess of riot which would have been dangerous to others as well as totally destructive to themselves. Blessed be God for the opportuneness of the word of mercy. Men delay to come, but God does not delay to call.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1672.cfm

The Choicest of Favour

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation 5 Comments

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. -Romans 5:6

Some men have right-hand sins, respectable iniquities which challenge little censure from their fellows; not black, but whitewashed sins. Such men are not thieves, they are not licentious, they are not drunkards, but their sins take a quieter form; they mock God with their self-righteousness, and insult Him with their prayers, which are no prayers, but only pretenses and fictions, and not the real prayers of God’s elect ones. Others have left-hand sins; they plunge into the sins of the flesh; no vice is too black for them. Only propose to have a little pleasure and they will plunge into any vice to gain it: ay, and almost without pleasure, altogether without present profit, they will sin, as if for sin’s own sake. When they have burned their finger in the candle they will after that hold their arm in the fire; when they have brought disease into their bodies by sin they will return to the evil which caused it; when they have beggared their purse by their extravagant lusts yet still they will go on playing the profligate; when they have filled themselves with despair till they are as a bucket running with gall and wormwood, and this has been emptied out for them by God’s grace, they will fill it up again, for they are infatuated with sin; they find a delight in it and they will not, they cannot give it up.

Tell it, tell it, tell it; sound it forth beneath the sky for ever and ever, that the Lord does call to Himself such wanton wanderers…Oh, the pity of God, not only for the miserable, but for the wicked; it surpasses thought. “In due time Christ died for the ungodly.” Favour to the guilty is the choicest of favour. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1672.cfm